Mangrove - Ras Mohamed

On a recent trip to Egypt i went to visit a mangrove in Ras Mohamed national park.
It was about 100 kilometers from where i was staying so i hired a taxi and driver for the day (€20).
The park is just desert, various beaches, lagoons and a mangrove. It is a massive area. I was there for about 6 hours and the only people i met were the police.
Some of the lagoons had a very high salinity. The edges of the water were encrusted in salt. There was no sign of life in these and i was crispy with salt leaving the water.
The beaches (if you could call them that) were amazing. Once you found an entry point in to the sea you were greated with coral heaven and some very colourful fish. More about that at a later date.

Once i arrived at the mangrove i was greeted by hundreds of crabs scattering to burrows in the sand.
.

There were all sorts of crabs including fiddler crabs.


shame face crabs.


sally light foot crabs.


Various crab photos.

These were beautiful shiny black crabs with white spots on the back.




Some of the crabs had amazing coloured shells.





The fiddlers were comical looking with the big claw.




There were also some dragon fly. All the ones i seen were the same and they camouflaged well in there surroundings.


There were also hermit crabs big and small.



Along the waters edge i was greeted with loads of fry in water just deep enough for them to swim in. I suppose this kept them out of harms way from bigger fish in the water.
Can you see the fry amongst the algae and leaf litter.


The water itself was shallow. About 20" (50cm) at it's deepest point. Even at this i found crabs, shrimp, octopus, cube trunkfish, puffers, eels, moon jellyfish, damsels and the list goes on and on... All of these were young. It was like a nursery.


A little bit of video. You will have to forgive the quality. Shrimp lovers if you keep your eyes peeled you might see some nice shrimp.

Some great aquascaping ideas there. The cloud at the end of the vid. was like a zoo plankton. Probably shrimp larvae.

Wow, lucky you.. What an amazing looking place...

Wow:laugh:
Beautiful

Brilliant stuff mate.Certainly a different idea with very interesting results.Most people just do the touristy dive spots.mangroves are a wonderful nursery,as you've seen,there is a good size area of mangroves in the estuary about 100yds over the back fence of my parents house.
I will bear this in mind when I finally get there,a good option for non diving days.And cheap too:woohoo:
Cant wait for more!

I thin i over did it with the crab photos
Dave next time your home you will have to visit the mangroves.
Yes it was a nice change from the norm and a great place to visit.
Ras Mohamed was the only place i found the big and beautiful Napoleonfish and although there is a place there called shark view point, i found no sharks. I didn't find any in sharks bay either. Maybe next time.

Wow great photos and video, the place looks amazing, peaceful and undisturbed. The taxi fair was not too bad either!

I bet your 6 hours there passed like it was few minutes. It that area tidal? I don't know much (read anything) about Mangroves, they look like miny tree stumps, are these the same mangroves you can use in a marine tank for filtration? They are a plant of some form I assume?


Daragh

WOW, I missed this when you put it up first, there is some amount of life in that Mangrove. Thanks for posting your photos and video, great viewing.................Tom.

The Taxi was cheap. I had someone arrange it for me. The driver got 70% of the fare and the middle man got the other 30%. I priced the fare directly of Taxi men and they roughly wanted €60. They have a strange system were everyone has there hand out and everyone gets there cut.
I paid €30 for a Taxi and driver for 24 hours and we covered a lot of miles. He would just sit and wait for me were ever we went and if i wanted something he would go and get it. A bit like a personal guide. Even when i would go in somewhere for food he would have a talk with the people working there and i would pay a lot less than the tourist list price. So a bit of a bargain.

I would have stayed longer but the place is cleared at 4;pm and i only got to a fraction of the parts i wanted to see.
It is tidal but the water level (judging by the surroundings) only came up another 6" or so.
What look like miny tree stumps are young trees. As far as i know Mangrove trees are very, very slow at growing. The roots of each tree spread out very far and it is the root that helps filter the water just like mangroves used in refugium's on marine tanks to help with Nitrate, phosphate and organics.
When i was walking in the water i had to walk on thick roots buried in the sand. If i tried to walk on the sand near the edges i would sink a few inches. The roots seemed to stop the sand compacting.

If Cees comes along he might add some info here. He would know a lot more about Mangroves than me.
Here is an article he did on Anableps in case anyone missed it first time around.
www.irishfishkeepers.com/cms/content/view/89/30/

It was only when i got home and watched the video clip's on my computer that i realised it was off colour. I know now that if i didn't switch the camera to under water mode it wouldn't try compensate the colour change under water. I ended up with a lot of brown or green video:( . It looks normal watching it back on the camera.

If I ever go to Egypt I will give you a call first, this is really very interesting stuff and a lesson for us all, thanks.


Thanks for the link to The Mangrove Aquarium By Cees de Snoo, it was a great story and just lets you know what is possible.

Do you know is there any way to see the pictures on the article.

Thanks again.........................Tom.

Tom wrote:

Do you know is there any way to see the pictures on the article.

The pictures were deleted by accident in the latest upgrade. I'll check with Darragh to see whether we can restore them.

Valerie

Valerie wrote:

Tom wrote:

Do you know is there any way to see the pictures on the article.

The pictures were deleted by accident in the latest upgrade. I'll check with Darragh to see whether we can restore them.

Valerie

Valerie thanks again for your help...................Tom.

Hi Tom. Thanks for the comments. I didn't notice the pictures gone. I just got the link.
It was a great article he did and he obviously put a lot of work in to the system.
Hopefully Darragh Sherwin will be able to retrieve the photo's.
Fair play Valerie.

Photos appear to be back, brilliant stuff Darren it looks like a fascinating place to spend some time. €20 for a day hire of a driver/car 200km round trip, unreal.

zig wrote:

Photos appear to be back, brilliant stuff Darren it looks like a fascinating place to spend some time. €20 for a day hire of a driver/car 200km round trip, unreal.

Zig,

The photos we were talking about is from the link to The Mangrove Aquarium By Cees de Snoo.

Tom.

Tom wrote:

zig wrote:

Photos appear to be back, brilliant stuff Darren it looks like a fascinating place to spend some time. €20 for a day hire of a driver/car 200km round trip, unreal.

Zig,

The photos we were talking about is from the link to The Mangrove Aquarium By Cees de Snoo.

Tom.

oh right sorry about that:huh: must pay more attention:unsure:

good post darren, looks a lovely place.