Under the Red Sea

By way of introduction to this 1952 book Hans Hass mentions that as the war ended his research vessel was ‘carried off as legitimate booty', his equipment was almost all lost, and he was bank account was near drained. His plan - make a low budget visit to Sudan and dive the Red Sea, take great photographs and prepare a proposal to obtain funding for a new vessel and future exploration.

Let me address the elephant in the room first: Photography - diving and photography are Hass's thing. Photography is his way to capture what he sees and share it easily with the reader... all the photographs in this book are black and white. Let that sink in a second... ... ... In the narrative he describes the beautiful colours of the fish, the coral, the other sea creatures, even in the photo captions he describes this. He also describes in detail the photography - his equipment, the methods and techniques... However I guess I had better pack all this moaning back away, as Mr Google tells me that photography in the 1950s was black and white and by the 1960s colour photography was becoming available. Hard to fathom.

So to the good points. Hass covers his visit for 37 well. He takes in daily routine without labouring the mundane; he shares plenty of technical details without being overly technical; he manages to describe his constant diving without becoming repetitive; he describes well all the interesting characters he meets off the water.

When he arrives in Sudan, he is taken in by Bill Clark, a British Commissioner in Port Sudan, who he ends up staying with for the duration of his visit. As such he is introduced to, dines with and visits all of the Sudanese high high-fliers and ex-pat notables, and his tales of those functions and dinners break up the diving stories well.

The diving is diverse and we are provided with details on sharks, wrecks, corals, many different types of fish, panther rays, lion fish, manta rays, pearl producing mussels, even a halavi (sort of a ray shark combo!)

A last mention, for the dust jacket - great period picture of a manta ray,

4 stars.