Diving in the Red Sea

I wish I could claim I took some of these pictures or was even present during the diving/snorking trip when they were taken, but, I wasn't. Instead, as is usual around these parts, a man took a liking to Ashley and gave her a simple gift of a CD of some of his underwater photos. Despite our lack of connection to the photos, I still want to post them to give an example of the aquatic life in the Red Sea.All of our dives in Dahab were shore dives where we had to strap on all equipment and then walk out into the water. I prefer jumping off the back of the boat and being picked up to the precarious walking across and between reefs to get to the depths, but still, the shore dives offer beautiful scenery both in the water and looking back towards the mountains on the shore. From this view it's slightly difficult to see that this is a lion fish and not some strange soft coral or other strange creature. This one is smaller, and in this picture less colorful than the average lion fish, but it's a beautiful display of its larger, almost feather-like fins and venomous spines. These are abundant in the Red Sea, more so than any other place I've been diving.I liked this picture for two reasons. One, it shows the blue of the clear waters in the sea. Two, it shows the abundance of tiny, colorful fish that constantly hang about the hard and soft corals.This picture is simply and example of the corals that cover nearly the entire eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. I think when most people think of puffer fish they think of large, round, inflated fish with spikes jutting out in all direction as a defense. There are actually more than 120 different species of puffer. I don't know the exact specie name of this particular fish but these were common throughout each of our dives.I wish I could claim we saw a dolphin, even at a distance in any of our dives. The truth is we never did. Still, this picture is a great one and I'm posting it because of the simple fact that everyone loves dolphins.This is a nice coral head, one which would be fun to swim around, searching in the cracks for lion fish, moray eels, or perhaps an octopus.Another similar pic, but this is nice to show the different shapes of the corals, like these more rounded ones that are mushrooming up from the rest. No matter how many times I see a moray eel, it's always exciting. There are many different species and although they're usually found hiding in the cracks of the reef it's awesome to see them swimming in the open water.These orange fish are every where on the reef but the jellyfish is a less-than-common site. Like the dolphin, we weren't lucky enough to see a jellyfish of this size but, again, I'm posting the photo anyways.