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CMAS's
8th World Underwater Photography Championship took place last
June in Sorna Bay, a new resort 45 minutes by road south of
Hurghada, Egypt. Safaga Port is a half hour down the road.
The event took place from 11th to 15 th June 2000 when 51
photographers with their models and team captains from 28
countries competed.
Pete
Ladell and myself represented the UK and Colin Doeg also attended
as part of the five man judging team. We had decided to arrive
a few days early to acclimatise, make sure the cameras worked
and try out our creative shots.
The
flight to Hurghada was inevitably delayed so our arrival at
Sorna bay was after midnight. The next day saw us up early
to try and organise some diving. blo luck until we met the
Austrian team who told us the bus to the dive boots was leaving
in ten minutes! With a quick pack we boarded the bus to be
transported to Sorna Bay Marina, which resembled a building
site. The quay luckily had been finished and a few typical
Red Sea Liveabaord boats were waiting for us.
For
the next two days we dived a variety of inner reef sites,
which, with the exception of Tobia Arbaa, were no better than
Eilat. The Egyptian Dive Federation had organised for our
non- competition films"to be processed in Hurghada, so
a man in a white car collected them after we returned from
our second dive and promised to return them that night. Well
he kept his word and that evening he returned them at 3.30
am and the following evening at 1.30 am!
The
Competition
The
aim of the competition was to show your ability in four pre-selected
categories; wide angle, fish, close-up and creative shots.
Each entrant received just four films, with four one-tank
dives over two days and ninety minutes, maximum, per dive
timed between entering and exiting the water. There's no time
for faff ing about. Peter L, managed to arrive back on board
with less than a minute to spare on more than one occasion!
The
championship took place at four sites which were not announced
until the start of the event so on our preceding days'diving
we could only guess which to visit and suss out. We struck
lucky with one of the four, which really did help us get our
bearings for the competition shoot.
The
Egyptian organisers had chosen two inshore and two offshore
reef sites. For shallow inshore sites Gamal Soroya and Tobia
Arboa (with its seven distinct coral towers) were chosen along
with Panorama reef and Abhu Kafan as deeper offshore dives.
Each day two competition boats would dive one inshore and
offshore site each. On these days the coastguards had closed
the sites to all other dive boots, which was great, in theory!
Our
boat (which consisted of the UK, Irish, Austrian and Croatian
teams) and the Spanish, Brazilian and Portuguese team's boat
had been drown together so day one of the championship saw
us both heading to the furthest dive site, Abhu Kafan, over
an hour and half away. I had dived this site with other Bsoup
members over a three-day period in 1994 when few day-boats
or safari boats ever visited. Well word gets around for on
arrival there was one already anchored and before we even
entered the water two more arrived! After that they put coastguards
on board the competition boats to keep other people off!
The
best anchorage at Abhu Kafan is between the main reef and
a large submerged coral head to the south of the reef. Here
there is a wide (18m deep) gully that is current swept. The
walls are covered in red soft coral and the occasional fan
coral. Closer to the surface large shoals of anthias combine
to create lines of orange around the reef. Both of us took
the opportunity to take wide-angle shots here of the abundant
colourful soft coral and seascapes.
The
afternoon saw us at Tobia Arbao, a small site of seven coral
pinnacles with overhangs at their bases and colourf ul soft
corals with small shoals of sweepers sheltering. The problem
with this site from a photographic point of view was trying
to exclude other divers from your pictures. I got my close-up
subject here, an interesting Christmas tree worm on some fire
coral.
On
the second day we dived at Gamal Soraya (small camel), a small
inshore coral reef with a few submerged pinnacles, and one
of our test dive sites. I was struck by the number of fish
here. Shoals of Red Sea banner fish were almost queuing up
to be photographed, and the divers were lining up to shoot
them! I also shot masked butterf ly fish, black spotted grunt
and a squirrelf ish. With minutes to the deadline and film
still left the inevitable blue spotted ray saved the day.
Panorama reef was our final dive. This offshore reef provided
us with another opportunity to shoot wide-angle seascapes.
The north side of the reef started as a wall down to between
15-20m before sloping to 30m when it again became a wall.
This site offered all the usual Red Sea soft corals and a
magnif icent fan coral at 30m. Close to our anchorage at 3m
was a collection of large red- skirted anemones with small
colonies of two bar anemone fish (clownf ish) darting about
them. Them were plenty of subjects for the last few frames.
The
Results
The
Italian and Spanish teams who took first and second places
in the team and individual rankings once again dominated the
championship results with awesome pictures! Them was however
a surprise as a Slovenian have achieved third place in the
overall individual ranking.
The British team (which still has much to learn about international
competitions) enjoyed the event and I was pleased with my
6th position in the close-up category with my Christmas tree
worm on fire coral from the first day's shots. It is certainly
an achievement to receive a placing in one of the four categories
and probably the one that everyone had hoped to do well in.
I
would like to extend my thanks to all those who helped the
British team and to our major sponsors who were The Sub Aqua
Association, Scuba World Magazine and the British Society
of Underwater Photographers. To prepare and compete in International
events costs dearly in time and money.
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