EGYPT

SATAYA / ELPHINSTONE

SATAYA

Sataya is a small horseshoe-shaped reef, about 5 kilometres in length and about 10 km off the Egyptian coast. The reef forms a small bay, which protects up to 350 spinner dolphins from currents and waves on the other side. The dolphins nap there, in shallow water after hunting squid outside the reef at night. They are asleep much of the time, with one side of their brain on and the other off—alternating hemisphere regularly … While they sleep the dolphins often cruise faster and are wholly inattentive to swimmers. They do wake up, however, and are much more interesting awake than asleep. Behaviours and numbers vary greatly. Sometimes the animals are playful and alert; sometimes they’re completely preoccupied and busy, swimming away from people most of the time. One frequent behaviour is mating. It’s as common to see a large group, numbering even a hundred individuals, as it is to see one or more smaller groups of animals.

Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a dozen or more animals playing gleefully or see them swim repeatedly in a circle, passing in front of swimmers over and over and at regular intervals. They always surprise you since it’s impossible to predict both the number of animals and their behaviour before you enter the water with them.

ELPHINSTONE

Every year either on the way to or back from Sataya, we stop at Elphinstone, a standalone reef situated about 30 kilometers north of Marsa Alam.

The reef is covered in, carpeted by colourful soft corals and frequently visited by hawksbill turtles. All the usual suspects also inhabit the reef: angelfish, butterflyfish, anthias, lionfish, snappers, moray eels, clownfish … as well as various wrasse species including the Napoleon, Klunzinger, cleaner and sling-jaw wrasse.

But it is the oceanic whitetip sharks that Elphinstone is famous and prized for. Frequently curious and supremely confident, we usually see anywhere between one and five of these magnificent animals every time we visit. Open ocean sharks that are formidable predators, they are always accompanied by pilotfish, which occasionally even form clouds around them. The oceanics are beyond beautiful—and make for wonderful models.

Famous resident male dugong at Marsa Mubarak in Egypt
December 2017

A voracious goliath with a herbaceous appetite. A creature with features so ridiculous that you might laugh.

With valves for nostrils, pinhole ears, beady eyes and a flat face with moustache and beard, this 3-metre long animal, basically 300 kilos of fat, was moving at a snail’s pace. And yet, he had us hyperventilating as he led us all around his gigantic bay in a crazy current.

He spends the entire time grazing on seagrass when he isn’t travelling to and from the surface—or breathing there.

Glass fish, ‘lost and found’ in Marsa Mubarak

EGYPT
December, 2020

You always see glass fish in large numbers. They are very pretty, highly coordinated and lovely to watch.They pick beautiful and, occasionally, mysterious habitats— coral-heavy spots on the reef or actually inside shipwrecks. Every time I’ve seen them around coral a significant proportion of them were in the shadows.

On the very last day of our 2020 trip, we stumbled onto a myriad glass fish (pictured here) around and on topof a magnificent coral head just under the boat!