Trip Report Red Sea Aggressor IV 24.-30.8.2024

[Asanoth]

Hello,
recently I came back from week long liveaboard at Dedalus and St. John with Red Sea Aggressor IV. This was only my second liveboard, first being the Bajak (Trip Report - Komodo Bajak liveaboard (Scuba Republic)) and I only had 50 dives before, so take the report as such, and as with any other report, this is my subjective opinion and impression and nothing else.
We did not have a large budget and were looking for 900-1000ish boat, trying to avoid Russian boats. This was not so easy, but eventually we chose MV Tillis. Just before booking, I discovered one of their boats just burned up and another one a year before, which made me fairly hesitant: However, at that time (and still up this week), I bumped over Aggressor having 63% discount on summer cruises, so the choice turned fairly clear. Later (in May), they added the same discount for the rest of the year and going to -67 % during summer - had we known this, we would have probably gone in October. If you look on their websites now, the discounts are still there, so I am not spilling any beans here, but the cruises are almost full. I should say, we would never have paid the full price, which is somewhat 2700 USD, we are simply not that wealthy; we would not even pay 1500 USD (in the context of the Red Sea).

First, to sum up my impressions:

Good
- Outstanding organization during the cruise.
- Up to 23 dives.
- Long dives - I averaged on 57:30 per dive - and many of them were deep.
- Great service crew.
- Safety seemed to be handled well.

Bad
- Some last minute itinerary decisions were not to my taste and were not discussed with (all?) guests.
- Only one dive at Elphinstone!
- Some guides were not so pleasant to deal with (not rude, just not pleasant) and I had very hard time understanding one of them under water.
- The conditions clearly specify there is a voluntary tip only, but the director said on the last day, that the tip is required at minimum of 100 USD pp.
- Bill for tips, gear, park fees etc. is prepared in USD, but then you pay in EGP (unless you have cash) and they used rate 3 % lower than the actual rate.


General organization:
There were 25 guests split into 3 groups. The groups were not set in stone and some people switch to get to their buddies or possibly for some other reasons. Here I truly understood this dive - eat - sleep - repeat thing. The organization was top notch and everything ran as a Swiss watch. The programme was fairly intense - four day dives every full day and an added night dive when possible. Almost everybody dove on nitrox (100 USD), air divers (and not just them) skipped some dives.
Safety breefing was thourough, I tested the emergency exit myself and it was open. There is a night watch. Charging in cabin is forbidden to prevent fire, there are charging stations outside, I never once had a problem to find a free outlet, but many people seemed to use them to keep swimming suits, glasses, other clothing etc.
They keep records of every diver's max depth, dive length and air left, which seems responsible: however, they do cheat on the sheet and if you report less than 50 bar, they just put fifty, sometimes the same for depth.
En suite cabins were good, we were in a double, which was smaller, but not really by much given how the space is used. The engine sound is worse up front and of course boat rocking as well, but the sea was calm during the week. Toilet was placed very high and front to the wall, so it was pain to use.

Food
Food was decent, but nothing to write home about. Buffet breakfast after the morning dive tended to be the best, buffet lunch was ok, dinner was served. Fish and seafood was nearly always very overcooked, chicken so-so, red meat generally very good. For buffets, the choice was wide and not too heavy on meat. Gluten-free note: The crew really did great job in providing gluten free food, I always had a plenty of options. Desert was almost never gluten free, but they usually made something extra for me. I was not expecting this kind of service, and would be good with just stuff to eat that is not always plain rice. Now I do not have a strong obvious reaction to gluten, so I do not know how well they actually did, but everything seemed trustworthy. I had diarrhea for the whole week, though, but it really seemed not food related, more like too much diving too deep. Apart from three meals, there were bowls of fruit available at all times and an afternoon snack, which I usually missed (and which was often not gluten free).

People (guests)
I would not expect myself to put this into a trip report, but the experience was strong. I have never ever been in a group of so inconsiderate, unkind and rude people and I definitely did not expect that this would happen among divers. Now, I am not talking about not responding to greetings, whatever. People would just go where they want to and bump into you, saying no word. My gear was next to a gear of a Spanish in his 50s, when he went there, he just went through me, without a single sound. I tried to explain him what manners are and he did not do it again, but... come on. One German in our group pushed (like pushed pushed, not like tapped on her a few times to get her attention, nothing like that) my wife away from a moray eel, because she (as he evaluated) spent "too much time there" and he wanted to take a photo/video as well. Back on surface he made something up about not seeing a guide anymore and being back, but not why he would not simply swim around...? I read a while ago an opinion "I would never go with a company, which calls themselves "Aggressor"". I did not have this issue, but maybe the poster had a point and the name simply attracts such people.
On the bright side, eventually we discovered that we simply got mixed up with the wrong kids in the beginning and about half of people were nice and pleasant to talk to.
There was also a francophonic group, which stuck to themselves as they usually do.
There was only one Russian on the boat, he seemed like a nice guy, but was pretty much singled out. I felt rather bad for him, but even I found it difficult trying to approach him.
Majority of divers on the boat were from German speaking countries, mostly speaking German.
Also, some people (not correlated with their kindness) were really expecting way too much care and hand holding regarding diving. I saw people running low on air in some 20 m deep after 40 minutes, sharing gas. One girl went for the first dive and did not have a buddy, expecting that someone would just assign one to her (we were odd), but not asking and still going under water unbuddied. On the dive she got separated from the group (don't know why and how, as I ran out of air before her) and surfaced alone. By the way during the first safety briefing it was mentioned to buddy up. I think people need to be more active and responsible regarding their diving safety.
Speaking of hand holding, the guides were really there mainly to point the general direction and keep an eye on safety, not really guiding and looking for (small) stuff as in Asia. They were looking and pointing during the starring-into-the-blue dives.

 

[Asanoth]

Diving - general remarks
We went to the southern Red sea for sharks. I had a thread on this: Which month for BDE?
Chondrichthyes-wise, the trip was not really too great. We saw hammerheads at Dedalus, which was a highlight for me, also one or two single mantas (both probably birostris). One white-tipped reef shark at St. John's and no group saw a longimannus when in water - our group was the only one to see one, but only briefly from zodiac and there was one more at the boat in Dedalus, but not sure which species. Saw a few barracudas, my first, lot of trevallies (which people, as well as Aggressor's log insistently call tunas) and wrasses. I did not have large expectations, but at least I thought there would be more reef sharks. The guides told me that there are way more sharks in autumn, including hammerheads, which is in line with what my local OWD instructor said (and which was demented by some in the topic above). The crew director, however, said they saw no big stuff in last three weeks, so I count myself lucky still .
I do not enjoy staring into the blue for 20 minutes for something that takes 20 seconds and is gone - I am REALLY glad we did not do BDE instead. I am more of a muck diver, I guess .
The reefs we visited are in terrible, terrible condition. At Dedalus, maybe every 200th coral is NOT bleached. It is better at other sites, Abu Dabbab being the least hit, but the state is still atrocious. I started processing my photos and some of wide angle shots actually look like they are monochrome with blue background. Supposedly, it is partially seasonal and the coral recovers a bit during winter, but it was obvious that there is a worry of it not coming back to colour at all - this is the third year it has happened and so far the worst. It must have been stunning, though, before the coral was bleached. In nearly every of my log entry I wrote "pretty but bleached reef".

 

[Asanoth]

Diving schedule
It was possible to do up to 23 dives in total and I averaged 57:30 per dive, so it is safe to say the diving was plentiful.
General schedule would be 6:30 dive, breakfast, dive, lunch, dive, snack, dive, dinner, night dive (or before dinner).
At "shark sites", meaning Dedalus and Elphinstone, we did negative entries and we always did negative from zodiacs. I had a camera, so I was not too happy with that, but I managed. I would prefer to handle my gear more carefully though.
Dive briefings were good, but they finished at safety-stop. I (and probably others as well) did not know we were supposed to surface one by one when waiting for zodiac, which lead to confusion and possibly danger. This should have been clarified beforehand.
The Cruise Director really seemed to know his stuff and had loads of experience.
There were 4 guides taking turns with 3 groups. I preffered two of the guides to a third one and we only got the fourth for one dive. One of the guides looked a bit like Henry Cavill . The fourth guide endangered my wife, when surfacing around sunset time, he tried to speed things up and started strapping her gear off in water (on surface by the zodiac). He apparently did not do it very gently, but more importantly, when doing this, he pushed her right under another girl climbing up to zodiac with her tank on. Should she slip, I could have been a widower. This could have easily been prevented not only by the guide being more careful, but also by briefing us on how it is expected to finish the dive.

24.8.
The boat can leave the port if everyone is on board at 5 pm. We were the last to arrive, as we came from Cairo and being there at 5 would mean waking up before 4 am. Also, I overlooked that rule and it probably cost all of us one morning dive.

25.8. Abu Dabbab
We did three dives and one night dive. Fish life was diverse, coral was bleached. Blue spotted stingrays are common, we saw one or two turtles and I saw a scorpionfish on the third dive. The night dive was uneventful, but a girl buddied with the guide saw an octopus tentacle and a small squid or cuttlefish. There is only one guide on night dives, so it is better to go unguided unless you are really close up.
After the first dive this day, I got a 15 l tank and never looked back. I still surfaced mostly with 50-70 bar (while my 12 l carrying wife with 110+ ).

26.8. Dedalus
We did four dives at Dedalus. As mentioned before, the reef is all white and beige. First dive was uneventful, but after I surfaced - we surfaced one by one- the rest of the group saw an ocenic manta slowly passing by. Another group saw hammerheads.
Second dive we saw a manta close-up.
Second dive we saw hammerheads fairly close up, a highlight.
Fourth dive we started at the Anemone city, which was lovely, but we spent little time there. We saw two large barracudas in the deep and that's it.

The director decided we stay at the Dedalus one more day. The Aggressor's Adventure Log (Red Sea Aggressor IV | Adventure Logs) says: "guests most of them wish to stay one day more." That is total cow-poo, as I talked to four other people about that and none of them was asked anything. If someone asked me, given "we saw nothing big last three weeks" and "today we saw a lot", I would tell them "ok, we were incredibly lucky today, let's remember it and leave". But nobody asked me (or anybody else, probably).
In the evening, some of us went to the lighthouse, there was a Mobula sp. at the pier and a shark, possibly a longimannus, at the boat. Both encounters were very brief.

27.8. Dedalus again
As expected, we did not see much this day in the total of four dives. A group of dozens of large barracudas stand out, but other than that... meh. I tried to stick to the reef.
When unanchoring the boat, one of the zodiac was broken, so we had only one zodiac from now on.

28.8. St. John's
We did five dives this day. Most of my log entries begin with "bleached reef".
St. John's caves, the third dive with many swimthroughs, stands out and was quite lovely for me.
Other than that, we saw mostly reef fish and blue spotted stingrays. On the fourth dive we saw an enormous green turtle, unfortunately swamped by divers (including me, shame on me).
Alltoghether, St. John's was very nice (if only there were more colour).
Night dive was uneventful, my wife saw an octopus swimming, but I did not, once again.

29.8. Fury Shoals
We started with Sattaya South, coral condition was slightly better, but still bad. We continued to the Lagoon, but there were no doplhins in the morning, so we did another dive, that was nice and we saw 5 Chromodoris (probably the same species).
After we surfaced, the dolphins arrived, so we had lunch and did dolphin snorkelling early afternoon. It was actually fairly crazy, as the zodiac (borrowed from another boat) followed the pack, then we jumped, most people swam like crazy scaring the dolphins off, we climbed back and the whole process was repeated. Nevertheless, seeing dolphins like this was beautiful and I had a few moments just lying still when most other people swam away in pursue and got many dolphins swimming around me. Another highlight for me, even though it was not diving. Doing an unguided dive was possible instead of the snorkelling.
Last dive of the day was at Claudia Reef, which was a bit like St. John's Caves with swimthroughs. I was foolish enough to take my camera to the dolphins without housing, and even though I tried hard to dry it, my housing fogged mid dive. Small reefs here were lovely, but white.
We did not do a night dive, which seemed like a wasted opportunity. Three dives in total this day.
There was fancier and richer dinner, they baked the whole turkey, and one guy got a birthday cake.

30.8.
In the morning we dove at Elphinstone (after watching a shark safety clip). We entered the water at the northern plateau, which is going from 25 to 40 meters - I suddenly found myself well bellow 30 meters. The reef at Elphinstone was the most beautiful of the whole trip. It was still bleached to a large extent though. There were many lionfish and a few different fish species than what had seen before. After we boarded the zodiac, there were dolphins and later a longimannus. Our guide jumped into water to take video, but we only saw it from above. No other group saw one.
Then it was decided to leave Elphinstone, supposedly because "it was too rough". Not sure what was meant by that, the waves were not tall, maybe the current got faster? I do not know, it seemed like it was not properly explained, but other dive boats left too.
The last dive was at Abu Dabbab 6, a lovely place, we saw many blue spotted stingrays, a crocodille fish and our second or third Thelenota ananas.
I know we did a lot of dives, but it seemed we could have easily done another one. But maybe it has to do with flight schedules: We flew out on Sunday, so it would not matter to us.
After lunch, the payment was made. It is customary to tip on a liveaboard, but Aggressor stated in their documentation that tipping is voluntary, nevertheless, the tipping was required and floored at a minimum of 100 USD per person. Reportedly someone (surprisingly not me ) tried to give less, like 150 per couple, and was told it was not enough and asked for more. I do not feel the amount was outrageous, but I do not think that making something suddenly obligatory is a good practice. There is quite a patulous thread on reddit regarding this which one of our co-travellers started.
Furthermore, everything is charged in USD, but if you do not pay in cash, they charge the card in EGP and used a rate 3 % lower than it should have been. Again, not a good practice.

The last dinner was not included and we were sent into a place where meals are 20+€. Given a you can eat in Cairo or Hurghada for 50 cents, this was not something I was happy about. But I do not generally visit tourist restaurants when travelling.
Last breakfast was simple and we checked out at 8:30. It was possible to stay at the boat till afternoon.

Final thoughts:
I would definitely go with the RSA IV again, if the price was similar, if only for a number of dives and their length. But I would probably go in Autumn. The organization was great, diving was decent and a few issues that manifested themselves would not really deter me. But I definitely did not feel I was somewhere worth 2700 - 3500 € (not did I expect to).

 

[Whistler]

Great review. I enjoyed reading that. Some good points made. Thanks for taking the time.

 

[scubajasonr]

Great write up! Thanks for posting it. You have reminded me that I need to write up a trip I took in early August.

You did well getting 5 dives a day in. On my recent trip we were doing four a day which seemed enough. Although one less than your total we did manage to fit 22 dives into the week.

How busy was Sataya? I was there a few years ago when we were the only boat and it was an amazing experience with the dolphins. This year there were four or five over night snorkelling boats there, and when the dolphins arrived it was chaos with about ten zodiacs charging around dropping people into the water. It did improve a bit once the initial excitement wore off,

 

[Asanoth]

Which boat did you go with? Probably not a budget one?

I think we got less crowded Sattaya, because we did not go in the morning. After we surfaced from the second dive, somewhat before noon, there were zodiacs there. I think there were 4 zodiacs in total when we were there (two of our boat), but could have been less.

 

[sharkbear]

Many thanks for such a comprehensive and helpful report. I'm on the RSA IV for two back-to-back itineraries in November: BDE and St John's. It's so heartbreaking to hear about the massive coral bleaching. This will be my first trip to Egypt and I chose to add St John's based on prior trip reports of vibrant corals and stunning visibility.

 

[Sure Squintsalot]

It's so heartbreaking to hear about the massive coral bleaching. This will be my first trip to Egypt and I chose to add St John's based on prior trip reports of vibrant corals and stunning visibility.

I chose to dive the Red Sea (last November) specifically because of it's purported resistance to bleaching, despite very warm seawater conditions. During my 4 days of shore diving and week-long LOB of the BDE circuit, I dove with video lights and I saw:

1. Isolated , localized stands containing moderate to heavy bleaching of porites corals. In the grand scheme of the sheer quantities of porites coral on the reefs I dived on this circuit, it was a minor amount. Here is footage of bleached porites in the context of all of the other unbleached porites:
   
2. Extensive fluorescing and/or death of one particular hard branched finger coral species. These were often a pale lavender color but were far more often dead and covered in a brown-green algae or filamentous red algae. If you didn't know what to look for, these dead corals would be easy to miss.
3. Healthy, colorful, and abundant soft and encrusting corals, and sponges.

Statements of "massive coral bleaching" should be accompanied with photo evidence of such. BTW, a "tan" coral is not a bleached coral.

 

[Asanoth]

This can confirm the effect is partially seasonal.

 

[LI-er]

Charging in cabin is forbidden to prevent fire, there are charging stations outside, I never once had a problem to find a free outlet, but many people seemed to use them to keep swimming suits, glasses, other clothing etc.

Plugging swimsuits, glasses and other clothing into outlets sounds very dangerous.