The last time I tried snorkeling without a life vest was in Jamaica about 12 years ago. I nearly drown my friend and I in my panic, mind you, it was in 4 feet of water. Since then I’ve always stuck to the life vest. Yesterday, though, Mike and I snorkled (without a life vest) in the Red Sea at Ras Mohammed National Park. We were told snorkeling and scuba are both outstanding there. And it’s true; the main beach and Yolanda Beach have amazing reefs.
Basically, the water is about three feet deep for about 50-100yards, and you can snorkel the whole way seeing fish and coral. But then all of a sudden the ocean floor drops down immediately to about 30 yards, and all you see is a “wall” of coral that follows the coastline. It’s quite spectacular to see the shallow water plunge down into an abyss. Due to the large amount of plankton in the water, it’s said there are over 1100 species of aquatic life at Ras Mohammed which is at southern most tip of the Sinai. I’m not so sure we saw quite that many different types of sealife, but no doubt we saw at least a hundred.
Between the scuba diving and snorkeling, some of the fish we saw were barracudas, box fish, surgeonfish, blue spotted stingray, lionfish, rabbitfish, titan triggerfish, yellow margin triggerfish, clownfish, raccoon butterflyfish, and my favorite, the masked puffer fish (pictured here).