It's been a while since I shared underwater photos. Shame on me! So today in this post I want to show you some shots taken at Jackson Reef, Red Sea. The reef is located near the Sharm El Sheikh city, in the Straits of Tiran, between the coast of the city and Tiran Island. It is the northernmost of the four reefs that people usually mean when they say they dive in Tiran.
In general, one of the attractions of the reef is the sunken Cypriot ship "Lara" and the hammerhead sharks that often appear there in the summer. However, our dive was almost in winter, so we shouldn't count on sharks. We didn't dive to the ship, I heard somewhere that it's not the most interesting sight. So our dive guide took us a different, more popular route, across the underwater plateau and near the reef wall.
In fact, almost immediately in the shallow water we met this cute turtle.
 |  |
|---|
The turtle ate deliciously in the corals and enjoyed life in every way. We did not disturb it's meal much and went deeper.
The deeper you go, the less colors you can see due to the lack of lighting. So to understand the true colors of both corals and fish underwater, it is highly desirable to dive with flashlights, and for photo and video shooting it is almost a must. Although I do not always manage to set the light correctly to convey the underwater beauty completely.
 |  |
|---|
The coral gardens on Jackson Reef are gorgeous, there is a huge variety of both hard corals, like this big yellow "bush", and soft ones.
We also met a stingray and happily photographed it, trying not to disturb it too much - otherwise they, unhappy with the attention, usually swim away very quickly, and playing catch-up underwater is not always the best idea.
This is a bluespotted ribbontail ray, a fairly common species for its range, which is quite wide. But in any case, they are always nice to see.
 |  |
|---|
True, it is a little bit difficult to photograph it, as well as other rays: they usually stay close to the bottom in sandy areas and periodically try to at least partially bury themselves in the sand. And you always want to photograph fish and animals not from above, but at their eye level. So you have to dodge to get as close to the bottom as possible, without damaging the corals or scaring the stingray itself.
We met a nice long fish, one of the flutemouths, I don't know exactly which one. They are such an elongated shape, funny and swim quite fast.
These guys, the sandperches, usually pose no particular problems when shooting: they usually sit still on the bottom, propping themselves up with their fins, and don't move — perfect models! The main thing is not to poke the camera right in their face. However, this applies to almost all inhabitants of the wild nature.
Well, we went further and further, along the reef wall.
That time I was taking pictures with a fisheye lens, which is especially noticeable in some of the photos — strong characteristic distortions at the edges of the picture.
 |  |
|---|
Overall, I liked Jackson Reef even without taking into account the unvisited shipwreck and the missing hammerhead sharks (with them it would have been great :)). The dive was very nice and relaxed, with a variety of corals and other rich underwater life. With relatively easy access from the city, this place is interesting both for divers of different skill levels and for snorkelers: Jackson Reef has two plateaus in shallow water, so they can perfectly admire the rich underwater life, swimming on the surface without diving with scuba gear. But this is also a bit of a minus — in the season there are a lot of people here, lot of ships. Well, nothing can be done about it :)
It's better to watch photos in high resolution.
OLYMPUS E-M5 Mark II
You can also see my photos in my blog LJ and in my profile on RTraveler. You also can read a short interview with me here.
