BOOKREVIEW
Recommended Read
Treasures , Shipwrecks and the Dawn of Red Sea Diving By Howard Rosenstein
PUBLISHED BY : Dived Up Publications ISBN 978-1-909455-53-5
PRICE : £ 30
Howard Rosenstein is something of a legend in the diving world , a Red Sea pioneer who also founded the trailblazing liveaboard company , Fantasea . This book is his origin story , set against the golden years of the diving boom . It also serves as a portrait of the northern Red Sea at a time of political flux during the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula .
The memoir begins in 1968 , when Howard , then a 21-year-old Californian , received a scholarship to study anthropology on the Overseas Students program at Tel Aviv University in Israel . In August of that year he went camping at Caesarea on Israel ’ s Mediterranean coast with a group of friends , where he literally struck gold while snorkelling , finding a horde of Roman gold coins .
Howard donated a coin to a museum in Tel Aviv , but was legally entitled to keep his find , as he had found the coins at sea and not dug them up on government property . A decade later , the laws changed , but by then he had reaped the rewards of his offshore ATM . For a cash-strapped student , the riches transformed his life , the proceeds going into what would become Israel ’ s second dive centre , founded a mere six months after passing his basic scuba certification .
Inevitably , Howard was drawn to the coral reefs of the Sinai Peninsula , which had been under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War of 1967 .
Prior to the Six-Day War , what we know today as Sharm el Sheikh was little more than a Bedouin village with a few ramshackle buildings . Realising the area ’ s potential for diving tourism , Howard organised expeditions across the Sinai that culminated with a visit to Ras Mohammed . It convinced him that the best Red Sea diving was to be found at the southern end of the Sinai , and he moved his entire Red Sea operation to Na ’ ama Bay in 1973 .
Subsequent chapters cover the early years of tourism in the Sinai Peninsula , a period which saw a series of achievements , escapades and important visitors . Howard is a natural storyteller and the episodic nature of these chapters makes the book an easy , entertaining read .
Fuelling the book ’ s immersive power is Howard ’ s own photography , evoking the romance of desert diving 50 years ago . The production values of the entire book are impressive – we get a lush hardback cover and the photos are printed alongside the relevant text , rather than a few colour pages in the middle .
Above all , I enjoyed the way Howard gleefully evokes the personalities that gravitated to his dive centre , from wily ambassadors and fixers to bona fide diving heroes such as the ichthyologist Eugenie Clark or National Geographic ’ s underwater photographer David Doubilet , who made his name with a Red Sea shoot . This would result in a landmark cover story in the September 1975 issue of National Geographic , ‘ Strange World of the Red Sea Reefs ’. A photo of Howard diving in a cavern surrounded by glassfish was placed in the capsule of NASA ’ s Voyager 1 space probe , ensuring interstellar immortality .
This is an endlessly entertaining autobiography , a vivid memoir packed with characters and anecdotes . It also serves as a personal history of the Israeli occupation of the Sinai from June 1967 to April 1982 . In these pages , you will find the origin stories of many of your favourite wrecks and dive sites , the people who discovered
“ Fuelling the book ’ s immersive power is Howard ’ s own photography , evoking the romance of desert diving 50 years ago ”
them and how their conservation was started by Howard ’ s own brand of ‘ diving diplomacy ’ between Egypt and Israel . In the region ’ s war-torn present , perhaps we can allow ourselves some comfort from the peace efforts of the past .
As the Sinai returned to Egyptian ownership , the foundations of a diving industry had already been laid by Howard and his fellow pioneers . In the end , high fees and red tape made it difficult for non-Egyptians to operate in the area , so an unfortunate side effect of the peace treaty would lead to him closing shop after 25 years . What happened next with his ocean-going Fantasea liveaboards will , I hope , form the second part of Howard ’ s memoirs . Simon Rogerson �
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