Snorkeling Utopia Beach Club, Al-Qusair

More Red Sea snorkeling, this time to Utopia Beach Club, about 30km SSE of Al-Qusair, Red Sea Governorate, Egypt. Philipp (who we snorkeled with one day at Makadi Bay) had been to Utopia Beach Club before and assured us it was worth going back. He’s right.

As at Makadi Bay there’s good hard coral but very little soft coral.

The most common fish on the reef top were these Sohal surgeonfish (Acanthurus sohal).

We also saw other similar shaped (large oval) fish, like unicornfish and tang.

Butterflyfish are always fun. Here are the Red Sea raccoon butterflyfish (Chaetodon fasciatus),

the black-backed butterflyfish (Chaetodon melannotus),

masked butterflyfish (Chaetodon semilarvatus),

and the only photo I have of the threadfin butterflyfish (Chaetodon auriga).

I saw crown butterflyfish (Chaetodon paucifasciatus) for the first time.

Other colorful fish include Red Sea bannerfish (Heniochus intermedius),

the timid Regal angelfish (Pygoplites diacanthus),

and the even-more-difficult-to-photograph Emporer angelfish (Pomacanthus imperator).

It seems like every time we went in the water we saw heaps of lionfish

and bluespotted stingray (Taeniura lymma).

This cleaning station was only about 1m deep deep so it was easy to hang out and watch the action. That’s a Klunzinger’s wrasse (Thalassoma rueppellii) being cleaned by a Labroides dimidiatus.

Here’s a school of long-jawed mackerel (Rastrelliger kanagurta) out at the reef dropoff.

One time out there I saw a fairly bulky shark, definitely not a black-tipped reef shark, but I don’t know what it was.

Other exciting sightings included this flounder,

and the more easily spotted Red Sea toby (Canthigaster margaritata).

I also had a fantastic stonefish (or perhaps a scorpionfish?) sighting, but the camera wasn’t working. It was probably a bit too deep to get a good photo anyway.

The most common triggerfish was the Picasso triggerfish (Rhinecanthus assasi). I saw up to ten at once on the reef top.

We also saw orange-striped triggerfish and Titan triggerfish.

The most common puffer was the many-named (blackspotted puffer, masked puffer, dog-faced puffer) Arothron nigropunctatus.

We also found some white-spotted puffers (Arothron hispidus)

and starry puffers (Arothron stellatus).

Ferda liked seeing porcupinefish until she learned about how poisonous they are. Additionally, if they end up in the mouth of a shark or orca, they can inflate themselves, stick out those sharp spines, and kill the predator.

Maybe we should stick to trunkfish?

I wasn’t able to identify a small purple eel with darker purple markings. We can’t mistake the giant moray (Gymnothorax javanicus), of course.

In seven days of snorkeling I only found two or three bits of soft coral. One was this white anemone hosting some Red Sea anemonefish (Amphiprion bicinctus)!

This type of red soldierfish or squirrelfish or bigeye or whatever it is is more active at night, but I got this photo during the day.

I did go out once at night, but that didn’t make the Utopia lifeguard staff (or whatever they’re called) very happy. They’re even a little touchy if you enter the water too late in the afternoon, and they don’t like you going too far around the outside of the reef to the south. The latter would be a bigger issue in warmer water and less windy weather when it’d be comfortable to spend much longer in the water. In the first week of December it was important to have a full wetsuit. I guess I don’t know what the water temperature was.

As for waves and wind, we had one calm day. Every other day had breaking waves on the reef top and pretty good swells out at the edge. We could still snorkel out there, but it wasn’t so calm and relaxing.

One of the highlights of the snorkeling at Utopia Beach Club are the tunnels and bridges and canyons of the reef. It’s so fun to swim in, through, under, and around these formations.

This drone photo might give you a little idea about the features of the reef.

It’s all about the snorkeling for me, but what about the accommodation? Here’s the view from our room on an unusually calm day.

In my notes I wrote that the food was better than I expected. The bread and beans at breakfast were tasty. There was excellent eggplant at every meal, some good fish, and “a surprising amount of vegetables and fruit including guava, oranges, fresh dates, and persimmon.” Did I mean pomegranate there? As I’m writing this four months after being in Egypt, I don’t remember any persimmon…

Here’s our group of eight from Antalya.

This drone photo gives an idea of the hotel facilities,

but it’s the sea you’re coming for.