The Red Sea offers some of the best growths of corals in the world, which explains why I keep heading back there. So you’ll understand when I say it’s the reefs that are impressive, not necessarily the images.

This series of images was taken on some amazing reefs towards the south of the Egyptian Red Sea.  As you can see, the coral cover is quite amazing.  All the shots were taken in the top ten meters of the water column, in full bright tropical light.

Very often in the shallows, wave action favors the less easily damaged corals such as porites, as in the image below.  However, in areas of the reef that are sheltered from any prevailing currents, more fragile corals such as acroporids are able to thrive.

Porites nodifera colonies withstand conditions in the current-rich areas, but some acroproids find a home. Note the blue plating montipora, possibly M. tuberculosa, and the sky blue acro at the bottom of the image.

This shot is a little deeper and shows a plerogyra growing happily in current.

The image above shows a slightly different environment.  There are many very ‘happy’ corals such as a nice tabular acroporid and a small piece of Millepora platyphylla to the right.  But strangely, despite the seemingly excellent conditions which favor hard corals, there’s a lot of bare rock.  I wonder just what factors are responsible?