Sea Slug and the Turtle: Shore dives in the Gulf of Aqaba

After a few days visiting Petra and Wadi Rum, we headed on down south towards the sea. I contacted a few dive centres in Aqaba and the staff at Aqaba International Dive Centre were the first to respond with a friendly, informative reply.

My dive guide was Bruno and I was lucky that the group only consisted of him and myself. Bruno was very helpful, chilled out and a pleasure to dive with.

On the same day that I was diving here, guy was filming a short piece on scuba diving for a local TV station called Roya TV. I tried my best to stay out the way sitting in the corner while we waited to go diving. You can just see me in the background when the presenter is talking outside the dive centre. From the video you can also get an idea of the great visibility, varied underwater life and nice dive site offering easy access for a shore dive:

Mohamed Qatawneh, the manager of the centre was great and, like Bruno, also very friendly. I'd highly recommend diving with these guys. There was a third diver working there who was a little annoying; he tried to insist that I wore a wetsuit even though I told him I regularly dived in the Persian Gulf using only my rash vest. When I was asking for my weights he also tried to get me to wear an extra 2kg of weight - just to be sure. I can understand dive guides trying to be on the safe side when teaching inexperienced students but when I had already shown by dive certification and logged dives it kind of put a bit of a dampener on the start of the dives. I tried to stay away from him which wasn't too difficult as he was taking two ladies on a snorkelling trip.

As it was shore diving we drove down the coast to the area which we could access both the Cedar Pride and Japanese Garden.