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Dive Saudi Arabia
By Jeremy Cuff
Be one of the first visitors to dive on the eastern side of the Red Sea from the Saudi Arabian city
of Jeddah. There’s a lot to see and much more yet to be discovered…
The Middle Eastern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is built upon the riches of vast oil reserves and gold deposits. Symbols of this huge wealth are everywhere you look – extravagant royal palaces, impressive mosques, roads congested with prestige cars and shops full of expensive material goods.
Every major road and intersection is adorned with sculptures and monuments in a modern, even radical artistic dream – gigantic suspended urns, avant garde circuit boards, photogenic smokestacks, shimmering silver saws, illuminated globes and even fleets of boats.
All the global chains are there – McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Bodyshop – suggesting that western goods are not frowned upon in the way that the western way of life is. Saudi Arabia is, after all, still an extremely cautious and conservative Islamic country – wary of opening up to the western world in all its ugly splendour.
As a direct consequence, Saudi Arabia is not really geared up for tourism – which we discovered whilst planning our dive trip to this desert kingdom. The first step was to supply copies of our passports to the dive centre who then “invited” us to the country.
Obtaining an invite to Saudi Arabia is a requirement for securing a visa through the Saudi embassy in London. Single women and non-married couples should look elsewhere for a dive trip such is the strict Islamic code insisted upon. Even married couples are required to produce evidence of their marital status in the form of a marriage certificate.
That said, the Saudi authorities have recently decided to allow a limited number of “tourists” into the country, in our case to dive this less visited, less dived side of the Red Sea from the city of Jeddah.
There’s a large expatriate community in Jeddah upon which the dive industry has traditionally depended although they are hoping to benefit from more visitors like ourselves. Many of the expatriate actually learned to dive in Saudi and have dived nowhere else, using it as a positive and sociable activity to occupy their spare time. Until recently, visiting divers were unheard of and we were still something of a novelty. The dive centre said that we were probably the tenth individuals to visit them as tourists!
Our itinerary consisted of a weeks stay in Jeddah including five days diving with the excellent Desert Sea Divers team, who were also responsible for our daily transport to and from the dive centre and airport transfers. In fact, nothing seemed too much trouble. They also have a modern well equipped dive centre and shop, and a fleet of clean, well maintained boats.
Our dive guide for the week was jovial Welshman Dave Harris, a thorough and enthusiastic divemaster who was positively itching to show us the dive sites.
The Chicken Wreck is an ideal first dive and named after its cargo of chickens – now a rather macabre collection of bones in bags inside one of the holds. The wreck itself makes for an interesting dive but it’s also worth exploring the nearby reef and coral gardens. The numerous small coral heads are particularly worth investigating for some of the smaller reef inhabitants such as tiny pipefish. We spent at least half the dive out on the reef before returning to the wreck.
Every dive destination has its Coral Gardens and Jeddah is no exception. This particular coral garden was an extremely enjoyable dive and compared favourably with other sites of the same name. Here, we trailed a pair of Blue Spotted Rays that may have been mating although their skittish behaviour wouldn’t allow us to remain close for long.
Innumerable species of reef fish were abundant here including the ever present anthias “goldfish,” masked pufferfish and members of the angelfish, grouper, wrasse and parrotfish families. Invertebrates were also well represented in our dive logs by splendid coral formations, anemones, sea cucumbers, cleaner shrimps and a colourful species of flatworm.
The Ann Ann is a world class wreck dive and could well end up as one of those dives featured in “wrecks you must know” or “wrecks you must dive” articles if Saudi opens up. It rests on the distant Abu Faramish Reef and enjoys superb visibility. Visitors are taken out there early in their stay, as the sea came sometimes be too rough for safe diving. This gives you the possibility of another attempt later in the week.
"You’ll definitely see a Blue Spotted Ray," boasted Dave as we kitted up.
"Guaranteed?" I scoffed.
"Yep. Guaranteed," he deadpanned.
"Is it a plastic one?"
"No"
"That’s bold."
Sitting upright on the seabed at 30 metres, the Ann Ann is an impressive sight even to the most world-weary wreck diver. The dive begins with a descent to the huge propeller at the deepest point where it’s possible to swim between the propeller and the main hull of the ship, such is its immense size.
As we descended, a couple of white tip reef sharks cruised around the wreck – possibly curious of our commotion but keeping their distance from us until they eventually drifted away. Grey reef sharks are also frequently sighted around the area of the wreck.
To Dave’s delight, we rediscovered “George”, a Giant Moray that lives in the area of the propeller. The crew hadn’t seen him during the last few dives here and had pronounced him “missing, presumed dead.”
The upper area of the wreck was alive with reef fish, visiting pelagics and colourful corals, intensely vivid in the midday sun. Large tuna, filefish, fusiliers, masked puffers, bumphead parrotfish, sweetlips and the “guaranteed” Blue Spotted Ray were some of the highlights of this superb dive.
Craggly Towers is yet another fantastic dive site although this time the structures are completely natural. Here, we visited some of the most impressive coral formations I’ve seen anywhere. And the fish life was good too – this time yielding a small white tip reef shark, moray eels, groupers, sweetlips, needlefish, a blue spotted ray and an extremely enthusiastic tuna that buzzed us several times until deciding that we were neither food nor interesting!
Guy’s Wreck and Snapper Alley were our treats for dive day three. Guy’s Wreck rests against the reef and is festooned with coral and sponges. It’s an interesting wreck but small enough to allow an exploration of the reef walls later in the dive. On the wreck itself we approached to within a few feet of a large grouper while on the reef above the wreck there’s a splendid anemone guarded by a pugnacious pair of clownfish.
Snapper Alley boasts a myriad of coral species that teem with small reef fish. Although moray eels and pufferfish were noted in my dive log, I spent the majority of this dive studying the coral and small fish – made easy by a gentle, almost non-existent current.
Dive day four was a late start with an afternoon and night dive planned. This allowed a morning trip to downtown Jeddah. In the shelter of the Al Balad souk, a gigantic labyrinth of market stalls and small shops in the old town, we hadn’t noticed that the desert wind had whipped the normally benign and gently rippling Red Sea into a turmoil of white-capped fury.
To further complicate matters, diving in Saudi isn’t as simple as getting on the dive boat and heading out to sea if the skipper decides it’s safe. The coastguard also has a say and holds all diver and crew passports whilst the dive boats are out. And sure enough, they wouldn’t let the boat out – for what turned out to be two days. It was too rough.
Luckily, there is some very good shore diving from the private Albilad and Annakheel Beaches which are used by Desert Sea Divers.
From these shore sites, the reefs drop away quickly and there’s plenty to see. Sharks are quite often seen here if you go deep enough. We, however, preferred to stay relatively shallow and enjoyed four long dives including an excellent night dive. We observed octopus, many lionfish (including some very large specimens), several scorpionfish, pufferfish, boxfish, porcupinefish, moray eels, barracuda, batfish, reef crabs, triggerfish, sea urchins, shrimp and starfish.
One particularly fascinating moment from the night dive was observing a tiny cleaner shrimp attending a masked pufferfish while it remained motionless on an exposed piece of coral, allowing us to view from a few inches the unique symbiosis practised by these two species.
In Saudi, it’s still possible to have a dive site named after you. Dave explained that each month, the Desert Sea team organise an expedition to discover new and pristine areas to dive. The immense Saudi coastline means that they’re probably just scratching the surface. The format of these expeditions is four dives per day with a maximum dive time of 45 minutes. After each dive, you’re asked to assess the site for various criteria such as diver interest, safety, current, topography and depth. The result of this assessment decides if the location makes it into the regular itineraries.
We left the Desert Sea Divers crew with a good feeling, even though we’d been confined to shore dives for the last two days thanks to the wind and the coastguard. It really didn’t matter.
But why go to Jeddah and pay twice as much as the Egyptian Red Sea?
Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia is a very interesting country to visit. There are mosques, timeless souks, shopping malls, a vibrant and undiminished Arab culture and the fascination of visiting a country with radically different customs, philosophies and ways of life. The standards of accommodation and food were also excellent in our experience.
A stroll along the Corniche in the early evening can be thoroughly enjoyable with groups of giggling young Arab women in their abayas (Muslim gowns) hiding the latest western fashions. Families visit the seafront just like we do at home – perhaps with a picnic or a flask of tea. Or perhaps they might visit one of the many picturesque waterfront mosques to pray.
Don’t be put off by the bureaucracy, recent media coverage and the severity of the Islamic code (and… the coastguard!) although women visitors are certainly better off purchasing an abaya. All local women also wear the veil, though it seems that this isn’t expected of visiting women.
New hotels are being built at a rapid pace in Jeddah and it seems likely, though by no means certain, that tourism will develop in Saudi. But if you go now, you’ll be one of the first to dive the eastern side of the Red Sea. It’s definitely worth it.
May 2001
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