| GREAT BARRIER REEF, | MARSA SHAGRA, | MARSA SHAGRA 2006, | MARSA SHAGRA 2007, | KEY LARGO, | ZANZIBAR, | BONAIRE, | SIMILAN ISLANDS, | BUNAKEN 2005, | BUNAKEN 2007, | JORDAN. |
Me on a live aboard in Thailand.
Hi,
I'm Keith.
Welcome to my holiday web site.
Now that I have a digital camera I have set up this site to share my pictures and hope people will enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed taking them. Most of the earlier pictures were taken with a film camera and the negatives scanned and it is probably obvious that I am not a professional photographer. I only have an entry level camera, the Canon Ixus 500, nevertheless one or two of the snaps are not too bad and photography certainly adds another dimension to a dive, especially after you have mastered buoyancy control.
Now a little potted history.Some years ago I set up a reef aquarium and it was not long before I began to want to see the fascinating animals I was keeping in my tank in their natural habitats. Added to this my boss at the time was a qualified diver so one thing led to another and eventually I did the Padi Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses back to back as a retirement present to myself. I suppose it goes to prove that if you really want to do something it is never too late to start but now I do wish I had started many years ago. Having said that it certainly gives me something to look forward to each year and I get as excited as a small kid when the time arrives for a trip.
Since I don't like the cold and could not justify to myself the cost of cold water equipment I decided to use the warm clear waters of the Red Sea at Sharm el Sheikh for the start of my adventure which began in May 1998.
In order to increase my enjoyment and the chance of passing my dive medical I gave up smoking a year beforehand.
The courses were great fun and for the Open Water I was lucky enough to have a one on one situation. To make things easier and to avoid spending holiday time in a classroom I did the theory at home. For the Advanced course I was joined by another diver and found this actually increased the enjoyment; or was it that my companion was a young lady?
I would no longer go back to Sharm el Sheikh as I find it so commercialised and the dive sites so crowded. I much prefer the relative peace and quiet of Marsa Shagra in the southern Red Sea, although hotel development is creeping down the coast already.
In 1997, and before qualifying as a diver, I visited Australia where I snorkled on the Great Barrier Reef north of Cairns and this was probably the trip that persuaded me to take up diving.
Since qualifying I have dived in Indonesia from north Sulawesi in 1999, several times at Marsa Shagra in the southern Red Sea, Key Largo in Florida in 2002, Zanzibar in 2003, Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles off the coast of Venezuela in 2004, the Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea off Thailand in 2005, Bunaken in Indonesia in 2005 and Jordan in 2006.
The best places, so far, for variety and abundance of life are undoubtedly the Red Sea and Bunaken.
Click here to view my Reef Aquarium website.
Click here to visit www.scubaboard.com
Click here to visit John Liddiard Underwater An excellent site with many travelogues, pictures and much more.
