With all the brouhaha surrounding Gordon Ramsey not catching fish and Bear Grylls not sleeping under stars, I still can’t understand how the red tops get away with irresponsible and misleading “journalism”. There’s recently been alleged reports that a Great White Shark was spotted off the Cornish coast and The Sun had blurry footage recorded by some holiday maker of said shark leaping out of the water after a pod of dolphins.

This, of course, sent that particular rag into a feeding frenzy of mockups and spotters guide and the usual rubbish that you expect. What tipped me over the edge, however, was their helpful spotters guide to the “Worlds deadliest sharks”. The Great White, of course, was top of the page. I’m just surprised they didn’t do a comparison image to show how it dwarfed a double decker bus or even St Paul’s Cathedral. It also features the Tiger shark, which is a very aggresive shark and will have a go at just about anything, the Bull Shark, which is also very territorial and aggressive, and the Mako (shortfin in this case) which is large but less aggressive and rarely, if ever, attacks humans.

However, there are two other sharks on that diagram - the Nurse Shark and the Sandtiger or, to give it the more common European name, the Grey Nurse Shark. If you look at the diagram, the Nurse shark looks to be as long as a Tiger and nearly as long as a Great White (the largest ever found being 6.4m in length). The average size of the Nurse is half that - anywhere between 2.5 - 3m (maximum of about 4m). They are dangerous to humans in the same way that dogs are - if you piss it off or provoke it then it’ll bite you. Which, if you ask me, is fair enough. Most of the time, especially during the day, they can be found in shallow waters resting on the bottom doing nothing except sleeping. At night they hunt and they can be dangerous and you should be careful - especially if you happen to be a crab or lobster or even a small fish. When I learnt to dive in Thailand, we saw a lot of nurse sharks and they did nothing as we swam around them and we even stroked its tail while it lay sleeping. They are beautiful creatures and certainly not one of the deadliest of its species.

The Sandtiger, on the other hand, only averages 2.5 - 2.8m long. The Shark Foundations database entry for the Sandtiger/Grey Nurse Shark lists it’s likely danger to humans as, wait for it, “harmless”. Not even “mostly harmless”, simply “harmless”.

It angers me to see such blatant crap passed off as fact. I know some of it must be tongue in cheek but - and I’m aware of how snobby and patronising this must sound - does the average Sun reader really take everything they read with a pinch of salt (insert appropriate fish and chips gag here) or do they know that some (most) of it is just crap? People decry video games, cartoons and rock music for leading our youth astray but here’s a national newspaper just feeding our nation false facts. And it’s(allegedly) sending a journo out with dive gear and speargun to hunt the supposed Great White which is, if you haven’t been keeping up, as listed as an endangered species.

When I’m ruler of the world, I’m going to have a big pool full of sharks with fricken laser beams attached to their heads and I’m going to feed this fucking lot to them. Of course, the sharks would be Nurse Sharks coz they’re so damned cute but hopefully the laser beams will lacerate, eviscerate and mutilate. Or maybe just burn them badly. I’d even settle for giving them an extremely annoying itch!

Just installed a Lightbox plugin and this is to see if it works.

You would not believe the trouble I had trying to get an A4 print of this image. I tried Photobox but they couldn’t handle it. I tried the kiosk service at Metro Imaging in Soho and they couldn’t handle it either. So I ended up going to their Clerkenwell branch and sitting down with someone who worked out that it was obviously being printed afterhaving a Photoshop profile applied to it. She stopped talking to me when it was obvious my face was a uncomprehending blank.

The final print I’ve got actually looks nothing like this image which is a good and bad thing. It’s far more blue and you can actually see some detail past the diver. It looks much more like you were actually there. However, there’s something a little surreal about the slightly neon glow in the image below which I like but that isn’t on the final print.

What do you think? (Feel free to say you can’t stand it - I can take it!)

(If you’re interested, this was taken in the wheelhouse of the SS Thistlegorm in the Red Sea)

I got my photos developed today. They’re not overly great because I was reduced to using the most basic of automatic 35mm point and click cameras in a case. Although I used 400ASA films, I had no control over the speed, aperture or flash so a lot of them suffer from backscatter (when the flash reflects off particles in the water) which is annoying. Next time I will make sure that a) my digital camera is working b) I have a casing for it and c) I have a wide angle or fisheye lens for the wreck shots. Still, here are a selection of piccies for you to muse on.

There’s a moment at the end of a holiday where you almost wish that you would be led into a room where Laurence Fishburne would you offer you a choice between a red pill and a blue pill. Take the red pill, you return to the real world, complete with the tedious but necessary tasks, the mundanity of the daily commute and the oppression of an desk bound job in an artificially lit office overlooking the grey, rain drenched, smog ridden cityscape. But choose the blue pill and your holiday will never end.

Unfortunately for me, I’m obivously not the chosen one and my plane touched down at Gatwick airport this morning at about 2:15 am. after a five hour flight back from Sharm El Sheik. (I didn’t get home until nearly 7:45 so it took me about as long again to get to my home!)

I’m missing it already!

Three words to sum up my holiday? I. Love. Diving.

I last went to Sharm 5 years ago (to the day as it turns out) and even in that short space of time, it’s changed far beyond how I remember it. Whereas it used to be dominated by divers, we now seem to be in the minority. Sharm, or rather, Na’ama Bay is now an overly commercialized, tacky, resort focussed place that attracts tourists like flies to shit. It has about as much character and charm as a piece of fetid toe jam. So it’s a good thing that I spent my days in the company of some wonderful people on a boat, cruising up and down the Red Sea, doing 3 dives a day and enjoying every minute of it.

I was staying at the Oonas Dive Club which, to be fair, isn’t a fantastic place but the staff are friendly, there’s a ready supply of Sakara beer in the bar which also serves a mean pizza. Mind you, I spent approximately 6 out of every 24 hours in my room and that was primarily to sleep so it fulfilled every need I had.

The diving was superb. Did I mention that already? It can only get better too as it was still a little too cold for most of the interesting life (read sharks, rays and other pelagics) to be spotted and in fact we didn’t see many large schools of things like barracuda, tuna or even batfish until the last day, but despite that (and despite the cold - turns out I needed more than just a 3mm wetsuit!) it was great. We did the local sites (Ras Katy, Temple, Ras Za’atar) and Ras Mohammed a couple of times (Shark Reef and Yolande reef - and I finally got to see all of the famous Yolande toilets!), four of the Tiran reefs (Gordon, Thomas, Woodhouse and Jackson) as well as the wreck of the Dunraven (a steel steamer that sank on 24th April, 1876) and the still marvellous SS Thistlegorm (a WW2 British supply freighter, sunk by German bombs on 6th October 1941 with 9 fatalities).

Above all else, what made this holiday was the great group that I dived with. Thanks guys.

I’m getting more excited about the idea of going on holiday tomorrow. A week in Sharm El Sheik, six days diving, sun, sea and sand*.

So on the train the other day, the missus said to me “What happens if the boat leaves you behind like in that film?” The film in question was the low budget, DV filmed, based on a true story, thriller “Open Water” about a couple who go diving while on holiday and get left behind by the boat and are harassed by hungry, man eating sharks**, jellyfish and used condoms***. The film is based on the true story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan who disappeared from a dive boat while diving the Great Barrier Reef in January 1998. At least the likelihood of more dangerous sharks increases in that part of the world.

The thing is, though, that this isn’t so far fetched. Every year there’s a story coming out of Sharm about a diver and their buddy being left behind by their dive boat. In fact, the lead letter in this month’s Diver magazine is from someone who (having just seen “Open Water”) went diving in Sharm and, on surfacing, found to their horror that their boat had lost them. (Not much of a story as it was just a little way away and came back to pick them up).

The truth of it is that this would never happen on a well organized diveboat. For a start, you have a dive plan (”Plan your dive, dive your plan!”). Secondly, the dive leader and any divemasters should have a good idea about who’s on the boat - after all, they should have spoken to them all to ascertain their level of skill and ability****. And lastly, other divers should try to be aware of who’s on the boat with them. After all, even the most experienced and skilled divers can get into trouble underwater and it helps to know who’s around.

Of course, you can always make sure that you’re well prepared for such an eventuality. Whistles, rattles, strobes, flags, SMBs (Surface Marker Buoy), remote GPS locators - enough stuff to sink you really. In UK waters, most of this equipment is always a necessity but the conditions that you face when diving in the UK are vastly different to the warm, clear waters of the Red Sea. I’m deliberating as to whether or not to take my SMB to Egypt but I might take a small flag to keep in my stab jacket pocket. (And a goody bag to pick up litter left by any Italian***** divers!) Not that I think anything is going to happen.

But, as I assured my wife, if the worst comes to the worst and I finish a dive to find the boat has left without me then I’ll just have to swim the fifty yards to shore.

*Lots of sand. It’s called the Sinai desert
**Actually, they were reef sharks which are about as likely to eat a man as Linda McCartney ever was. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want one to bite me, which can happen if you piss it off or get in the middle of a group of hungry, feeding sharks. But they won’t attack you.
*** Well, would have been a real danger if they’d have been diving out of Southend.
****In my experience, most divemasters are more interested in talking to the buxom blondes in the skimpy bikini.
***** It’s not that I’ve got it in for Italians but I have yet to encounter an Italian diver who will persuade me that they are anything other than arrogant, rude, inconsiderate and dangerous. They’re fine on the surface (mostly) but they can stay away from me while underwater. Them and the Japanese.

I love diving, me. I would urge more people to do it but then the seas would be too crowded and the wildlife would get destroyed so I’m quite happy for you not to decide to take it up and leave me in peace.

It is peaceful too. Very. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a dangerous sport. You’re swimming around in a dangerous alien environment with a cannister of compressed air on your back for heavens sake. The first time I went diving in a sea I almost sat on an urchin and nearly got kissed by a lionfish. But the whole point is to keep your heart rate down and your breathing deep and easy so that you can stay underwater for as long as possible. An adrenaline sport this is not.

I got trained in underwater photography by a fellow called John Liddiard, one of the best and a man who travels the world as a dive journalist. His photos regularly appear on the cover of Diver magazine and each month there’ll be an article about wrecks in there. The course was excellent but it was also one of my first experiences of diving in UK waters so I stressed out a little with all the taskloading I had to do. It’s a shame I don’t know how to take better pictures too. John’s a great bloke and takes some fantastic photos (some of which you can download as a wallpaper for your desktop - I’ve got the one of the sealions on my work PC).

But the pictures I have on my walls at home are by a guy called Julian Calverley for the plain and simple reason that, for me, his photos truly capture the spirit and atmosphere of what it’s like to be diving. I discovered his pictures shortly after the first time I went to Sharm El Sheik diving about five years ago and found some great prints of places I’d actually dived. His limited edition prints are now available for sale at the Seven Tenths site. He does digitally colourise them from the original black and white but they are reminiscent of the work of National Geographic photographer, David Doubilet who is one of the most renowned underwater photographers ever. I just wish I could dive well and take photos well enough to be of anywhere near the same standard as these guys. Just practice I guess.

Anyway, first step is to get me a casing for my camera. As I can’t quite afford the £1000+ for all the bits to take my SLR underwater, I’ll have to stick to this instead.

If you want me, I’ll be here -

Both beauty and the beast, the Lionfish (Pterois volitans) is an easily recognisable reef fish found in tropical waters. The elongated dorsal fin spines and enlarged pectoral fins are extremely venomous and can cause painful puncture wounds. Lion-fish stings can cause nausea, breathing difficulties, paralysis, convulsions and collapse. Death may occur in exceptional circumstances but fatalities are rare. Lionfish are lazy predators and have a tendency to simply drift with the current.

(A personal aside, this is one of my favourite fish. I think they are beautiful creatures and are so graceful and elegant but serve as a lesson in life - not all that is beautiful is safe to touch.

And a note to Jazz, you would have got some of my own pictures tonight but it turns out that my scanner doesn’t work with XP so I’m afraid you’ll have to wait!)

The Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) is the biggest shark and the largest fish on Earth. Unlike other members of the shark family, the Whale shark is a filter feeder and it’s diet is similar to whales and manta rays, consisting mainly of plankton, krill, squid and small fish. The fish will process about 1500 gallons of water an hour, filtering its prey through its gills. This solitary creature is largely found in warm waters near the equator. The largest specimen to be found to date was measured at 59 feet in Thailand in 1919. On average, they measure about 46 feet (14 metres) in length and weigh 15 tons. Despite their size, they are slow swimmers, moving at about 3mph.