Diving in the Red Sea - Egypt

Descending from a dive boat at Elphinstone Reef, in Egypt's "deep south", I can make out little except a vague blur in the depths of the ocean. Gradually, as I sink further, its outline becomes clearer, and I see a lozenge-shaped reef just below me. Set practically in the middle of nowhere, this seamount acts as a magnet for wildlife from miles around - much as a watering hole does in the savannah.

Circumnavigating the reef, I see that both its northern and southern extremities are carpeted in a dense growth of corals and sponges, with huge numbers of fish milling around it. The herbivores and planktivores (munching on zooplankton) attract the carnivores and omnivores, right the way up the food chain to barracuda, shark, jacks, tuna, trevally and other creatures of the open ocean. It's these big fellas we like to see. An oceanic white-tip shark seems to be in permanent residence, with seven other shark species commonly seen here.

The big fish might come for lunch but they also like to pop by for a session at a cleaning station, to have all their irritating parasites removed by smaller fish. A seamount like Elphinstone is a bit like a motorway service station on the ocean highway: eat, refuel, get your windscreen cleaned and off you go. So you neverknow who's going to pull in for a break next: it could be a passing manta ray, a cruising oceanic shark, or a hungry hammerhead.

"When they all come at once, it's a magical place to be," says our dive guide, Brit. "Even if they don't, it's a very beautiful reef - especially on the east side, where there are load of soft corals. Plus," she adds, "you've got the wall dropping off into the deep - it has that bottomless experience that many divers crave."

Elphinstone can be a busy reef because the live-aboard safari boats also bring groups here, but in general the deep south has far fewer divers to bump into. It makes a refreshing change from the popular northern dive sites, which get very busy indeed. This is one of the main attractions for Rob Bastesman, a dive instructor. He spent three months working in Marsa Alam last year before choosing to revisit it for this year's holiday - always a good recommendation. "There's so much to see, the corals are in much better condition than in other Red Sea resorts, and the dive sites are much less crowded," he said. "Some of the northern dive sites are like Piccadilly Circus, but you don't get any of that down there."

Marsa Alam is some 170 miles south of Hurghada on the western Red Sea shoreline of Egypt. When I first came here five years ago, the journey entailed a tedious four-hour minibus transfer from Hurghada. Then, in 2002, Marsa Alam gained a new airport; weekly charter flights with Excel Airways from Gatwick now operate year-round. The southern Red Sea has become accessible.

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