I was on a live aboard in the Egyptian Red Sea and where going to dive on the famous dive sight Elphinstone reef, famous for sharks. The dive boat where supposed to go to the tip of the reef but dropped us just short of it, there was a current and the dive was supposed to be a drift dive along the wall. My dive buddy and me decided that the tip of the reef must be a better place than the wall and when we where that close we had to swim there even though we had to fight the current. We swam to the tip of the reef and looked around, nothing, what a disappointment. We where just over a narrow ledge going out deeper ahead of us.
Then out of the blue comes a large shadow, it swims straight at us. I see the tall dorsal fin and the strange looking head that identified this shark as a hammerhead shark. It swam up to us turned slightly passing us by only 2-3 meters (6-10 feet), swimming leisurely out into the blue water. We just looked at each other and tried to swim after it but the shark was swimming much faster than we were. We got back onto the plateau to do the drift dive along the wall when a new shape comes towards us on exactly the same path. This time it was only a large Gray reef shark doing the same drill, come close, check us out and swim out into the blue water again.
This was the first time I saw a large shark this close, they where really impressive. The Hammerhead was maybe 2 meters long (6 feet) and the Gray reef shark 1 -- 1.5 meters (3-5 feet). I don't know if the Hammerhead was a scalloped (Sphyrna lewini) or Great Hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran), on a previous dive one other diver had seen a hammerhead that he positively identified as a great hammerhead so maybe this was the same shark.
© Stefan Sarin 2000, 2001, accessed