Aqaba – Day 2: The Cedar Pride
AQABA
Day 2: The Cedar Pride
April 07, 2025
There’s nothing quite like a full day of diving to get me up and going. After a quick breakfast, we headed straight to the dive shop, ready to get back underwater.
Rafael had spent the previous night going over his eLearning – something he had started working through a few weeks earlier, although progress had admittedly been slow. Now, he knew that he had to learn as much as possible in as little time as possible, incentivised by the fact that he wanted to improve his skills. I, on the other hand, had an entire day of fun diving ahead of me. My stress levels were subzero.
As soon as our equipment had been loaded onto the truck, we headed towards South Beach, a long stretch of relatively quiet coastline south of central Aqaba that provides shore access to many of the area’s best-known dive sites.
The Pride of Aqaba
With Rafael still having a few confined-water sessions left to complete, Hisham and I would be heading off to explore the Cedar Pride – a former Lebanese freighter that had been deliberately sunk in 1985 to create an artificial reef.Â
The Cedar Pride had sustained extensive damage during a fire while anchored in Aqaba in 1982. After remaining in the harbour for several years, it was eventually prepared and deliberately scuttled following the involvement of now King Abdullah II, who was himself a keen diver. The wreck now rests roughly 180 metres offshore, lying on its port side across two reefs at depths ranging from approximately 10 to 27 metres.
Being a shore dive, we had a fairly long surface swim ahead of us before we reached the wreck. In the meantime, however, we got to lay our eyes on all kinds of fish – from cowfish and boxfish to dwarf lionfish, network pipefish, catfish and shoals of anthias and damselfish. My favourites, as always, were the painted Hypselodoris and pyjama nudibranchs.
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We crossed an entire area covered in marine algae that resembled a thick underwater biofilm and then, gradually, the Cedar Pride came into view. Measuring around 75 metres in length, the wreck was largely intact.Â
Although I had originally thought it was standing upright, it was actually lying on its port side, with the uppermost starboard section rising to within around 10 metres of the surface. With Hisham leading the way, we circled the vessel before entering one of its open swim-throughs to explore further. Its shadowy interior had become home to dozens of lionfish and batfish, the former making it somewhat dangerous to navigate. Once outside, we could appreciate the crow’s nest which stood out as the wreck’s most striking feature, adorned with colourful soft corals that contrasted beautifully with the clear blue water. As we continued along the hull, we passed mushroom-shaped ventilation shafts and the ship’s mainmast.
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In the deeper sections, the soft corals became more scattered, gradually giving way to hard corals and schools of fish, including the occasional barracuda. It was a spectacular wreck to say the least!
Down the Cable Canyon
Up next was Cable Reef, named after the underwater cables running across the site. Installed between Jordan and Egypt in 1996, four cables extend across the seabed.Â
The two northern cables pass through a deep canyon, where the surrounding reef was reinforced to prevent it from collapsing onto them. Large sections of steel netting and metal tubing now support the canyon walls, with corals and other marine organisms gradually colonising the artificial structures.
After beginning the dive, we headed north towards the canyon. The two enormous reef walls rose on either side of us, with the cables running along the seabed below and steel mesh covering sections of the rock. Corals had grown through parts of the netting, while all kinds of tiny creatures had found shelter inside the gaps. We spotted shrimps, lobsters, clams and several different nudibranchs as we explored the strange mixture of natural reef and underwater infrastructure.Â
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Perhaps most striking of all was the seascape itself Despite descending to a depth of around 30 metres, the water was so clear and so much sunlight reached the reef that the scene appeared far brighter and more colourful than anything I had expected at that depth. The reds and oranges that would have usually been filtered out were somehow still impossibly vivid. It went against practically everything I had experienced thus far. The undisputed MVP of the dive, however, was what appeared to be a leopard torpedo ray. Such an incredible creature – and one I had never seen before! One cool fact about these beings? They’re capable of producing an electric discharge that can stun prey and helps them protect themselves!
Back to the Wreck
After lunch back in Aqaba, I left Rafael at the hotel to finish the remainder of his eLearning and sit his final exam. Meanwhile, I had something else planned: a  night dive!
Together with Hisham, I found myself back at South Beach once again. We would be returning to the Cedar Pride for a second time, which, according to him, became a haven for marine life after dusk. He wasn’t wrong. Although the outline of the wreck was now familiar, it felt like an entirely different place in the darkness. We saw practically everything we had encountered earlier that morning and then some.
Shoals of glassfish filled sections of the interior, shimmering in the light from our torches. The most massive filefish I had ever seen floated peacefully inside the crow’s nest, while fish of every shape and size tucked themselves among the algae and crevices of the wreck to get some sleep. Meanwhile, shrimps, crabs and other nocturnal creatures began emerging from hiding.
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As always, night dives are my favourite. It isn’t simply because of the different creatures you get to see, or because a familiar reef can transform into an entirely different ecosystem after sunset. It’s the peace. The quiet. The feeling of floating through the pitch-black sea, with nothing visible beyond the narrow beam of your torch.Â
For those few moments, the entire world disappears. There is no land, no horizon and no sense of where the sea ends and the night begins. It feels as though you’re suspended inside an endless void of nothingness. Pure and utter bliss. Â