News
This Underwater Museum in the Red Sea is Bringing a Coral Reef to Life
Coral reef enthusiasts in Dahab have installed an underwater art museum in the Red Sea that will eventually give birth to a brand-new reef.
The project was organized by i-Dive Tribe, a community of scuba divers that facilitates recreational dives in Egypt and advocates for the preservation of coral reefs and marine life. They enlisted the support of Bedouin Divers, another local group, and worked in cooperation with Egypt’s national protectorates, a set of laws enacted to protect Egypt’s natural resources. Over the course of three years, members of i-Dive Tribe helped submerge three large statues in a section of the Red Sea that lies within the Sinai Peninsula.
The statues are designed to promote the creation of a new coral reef. Hundreds of open-ended steel tubes run through them to provide holes where small marine creatures may find shelter from predators. According to i-Dive Tribe, “The aim of this project was to create a new dive site, provide a habitat for marine life, create a rich suitable medium for coral growth, and decrease human impact on currently present coral reef dive sites.”
Hamed Mohamed, artist and assistant professor of fine arts at Luxor University, designed the statues. The first two of the series, which are encased in cement, depict the likenesses of Bes, the Ancient Egyptian god of joy, and Horus, the falcon god of the sun. The final piece of the new underwater museum, a 1,700-pound elephant made of recycled metal parts, was lowered onto the seabed last week, signaling completion of the project.“Several different species of marine life are already using the statues as their permanent habitat, soft corals have covered most of them, and patches of hard corals are starting to form in many areas on them too – and all in less than a year,” the group reported on their Facebook page.
According to the group, you can now visit the dive site and check out the underwater museum for yourself.
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/idivetribepage.
Over the next 12 months, specialist scuba holiday company Dive Worldwide will be supporting Bite-Back Shark & Marine Conservation with donations collected from client bookings to any one of its stunning dive destinations around the world. The independently-owned operator expects to raise £3000 for the UK charity.
Manager at Dive Worldwide, Phil North, said: “We’re especially excited to work with Bite-Back and support its intelligent, creative and results-driven campaigns to end the UK trade in shark products and prompt a change in attitudes to the ocean’s most maligned inhabitant.”
Bite-Back is running campaigns to hold the media to account on the way it reports shark news along with a brand new nationwide education programme. Last year the charity was credited for spearheading a UK ban on the import and export of shark fins.
Campaign director at Bite-Back, Graham Buckingham, said: “We’re enormously grateful to Dive Worldwide for choosing to support Bite-Back. The company’s commitment to conservation helps set it apart from other tour operators and we’re certain its clients admire and respect that policy. For us, the affiliation is huge and helps us look to the future with confidence we can deliver against key conservation programmes.”
To launch the fundraising initiative, Phil North presented Graham Buckingham with a cheque for £1,000.
Visit Dive Worldwide to discover its diverse range of international scuba adventures and visit Bite-Back to learn more about the charity’s campaigns.
MORE INFORMATION
Call Graham Buckingham on 07810 454 266 or email graham@bite-back.com
Free Octopus with every purchase of a SCUBAPRO regulator system
Just in time for the spring season, divers can save money with the FREE OCTOPUS SPRING PROMOTION! Until July 31st SCUBAPRO offers an Octopus for free
with every purchase of a regulator system!
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SCUBAPRO offers a 30-year first owner warranty on all regulators, with a revision period of two years or 100 dives. All SCUBAPRO regulators are of course certified according to the new European test standard EN250-2014.
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