After saying goodbye to Jamie and Eline in Denmark, I made my way to the airport for my Flight to Egypt. After some troubles with my flight booking, both in Copenhagen and Frankfurt due to the fact that I had recently changed my departure date (it does pay to get there early and have some time between flights)! I arrived in Egypt on the evening of the 8th September. From Cairo I made my way  overnight by bus to Hurghada where I was picked up at 6am by my Red Sea Protectorate contact, Tamer Monier.

I was hosted by the Red Sea Protectorate and they put me up in their five story building in the middle of Hurghada. From my room I could overlook the Red Sea so it onlt took a couple minutes before I was in the water to go for a snorkel ! During my stay here, I was introduced to all the scientists and people working in the building. I sat down and had a chat to almost everyone there and talked about things such as their monitoring programs (corals, water chemistry, birds, turtles), MPA zoning, GIS mapping, patrolling, education and the protected species such as sharks, turtles, dolphins and dugongs. It was a good learning experience and they were also keen to find out my thoughts on what they are doing and compare that to Australian MPA system. They are doing some great work and do appreciate how valuable the natural environment is for Egypt. It was particularly good to know that shark fishing is completely banned and large areas have been set aside as MPAs, helping them to protect the natural environment and the valuable tourism industry into the future.

During the week I was able to spend a day on the patrol boat and got to see the ridiculous number of tourist vessels that frequent the reefs and islands around these tourist cities. We were counting vessels visiting the reefs and were making sure that no boats were fishing or anchored and were all using the moorings. The sheer number of boats and people swimming and diving in these areas make it vital for the Red Sea Protectorate to adequately monitor and manage their natural environment.

At this time of the year the marine protectorate were mid way through their coral reef monitoring so I was able to help them diving and using the photo quadrat. They have been using the same technique since 2001 and taking photos of permanent areas on the reef allowing the calculation of coral growth, cover and diseases. They are using this to find out what areas may be getting degraded and this coupled with the number of tourist visiting each area they are trying to find the carrying capacity of the reefs and know when to close an area for restoration, and open up another reef, by the placement of moorings.

It was not just great diving, snorkelling and research that I had enjoyed my time doing. It was the time I got to spend with the people that made the difference. As I was living in the building with about seven other Egyptians they all made me feel very welcome. It was Ramadan month at this time where they fast during the day for the Muslim religion and offer more prayer than usual. This is a special month for them and they would celebrate after sunset with a large dinner on the roof of the building. I was always invited for dinner and after this we would try and talk each others language, joking around, playing pool and eating more food into the early hours.

All too soon I was again saying goodbye to my new friends, there were too many to name, so thank you to all, especially Tamer and Tarek in the monitoring team. They say I am always welcome to come back as long as I stay longer next time! So maybe I will, but now I have something special planned for next week.