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A rich collection of itineraries in Egyptian and Sudanese Red sea for divers, cruise travelers and watersports-lovers

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Oman Hallaniyat islands

A paradise of untouched dive sites, home to pristine corals, wrecks, 13 kinds of whales and dolphins, tuna, barracuda, mackerel, sailfish, marlin, swordfish, giant snapper and goliath grouper, kingfish, milkfish, giant octopus and cuttlefish, giant oceanic manta, honeycomb moray eel, green turtles, myriads of reef fish. New dive sites and wrecks can be discovered all the time. The islands boast a healthy marine life with awesome coral gardens where fish can be seen in thousands. Hallaniyat Islands are an undiscovered diving region where everything can be expected!
The cruise between the Hallaniyat islands offers guests an excellent chance to take in the stunning beauty of seascapes and wonders of the underwater world of Arabian sea.

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Sperm whales

Diving at Hallaniyat islands in Oman may present an occasion of meeting the Deepest Diver, a Sperm whale, as it travels between the islands. The sperm whale is the deepest diving mammal in the world who can go two miles beneath the surface of the ocean holding its breath for up to 90 minutes and conserving oxygen by decreasing its heart rate while Its flexible ribs allow for its lungs to collapse as water pressure increases. The sperm whale is an active hunter. Its prey are giant and colossal squid, cuttlefish and octopus.


Bryde's whale

A rare Bryde's whale can be encountered in the waters surrounding Hallaniyat islands in Oman. This whale reaching 16.5m length is known for its habit to often surface the waetr at irregular intervals and change directions for unknown reasons. The whale frequently breaches clear of the water, making dives between the surface and depths of 300m. Bryde's whales feed on plankton, crustaceans and schools of fish, which they engulf in their huge mouths. Its feeding behavior is spectacular, and involves the whale lunging forwards through a shoal of fish, mouth opened wide. A vast quantity of prey and water is taken into its mouth, which is accommodated by the expandable region on the underside of the jaw. This is then squeezed back through the closed jaws of the whale, allowing water to escape through the baleen fibers, but trapping food.


Dwarf minke whale

The minke whale is the most abundant species in the whale family. They are often observed in the Arabian sea. The dwarf minke whales grow to 8m long and weigh as much as 11 tons. It is easy to recognize the minke whale by its color: grey and black with large white patches on flippers. Minke whales are known for eating a variety of  small fish, krill, copepods, cod, herring, capelin, and pollock among other small sea creatures. The minke whale can create sounds at over 150 decibel and be heard from many miles away. These sounds are used to communicate various wants and dangers to other whales within the area. In addition to using vocal communication minke whales are also known for  breaching the water. These whales live for over 60 years and produce one offspring every 2 – 3 years.

Fin whale

The fin whale, the second largest mammal in the world after the blue whale, is seen sometimes near Hallaniyat islands. Other names of this whale are razorback whale, common rorqual whale, herring whale, or giant minke whale. Fin whale has a distinct ridge along their back behind the dorsal fin, which gives it the nickname "razorback.” This whale has a very unusual feature: the lower right jaw is bright white and the lower left jaw is black. The largest seen Fin whale was 27.3m long and weighted around 114t. Its beautiful, slender body is built like a racing yacht. Previously this whale could surpass the speed of the fastest ocean steamships. 
Males of Fin whales make long, loud, low-frequency sounds up to 186 decibels and can be detected hundreds of miles away. When Fin whale sounds were first recorded by US biologists, they did not realize that these unusually loud, long, pure and regular sounds were being made by whales. They first investigated the possibilities that the sounds were due to the part of a Soviet Union scheme for detecting enemy submarines. Eventually, US biologists demonstrated that the sounds were the vocalizations of fin whales.
The only known predator of the fin whale is the Killer whale, Fin whales usually flee and offer little resistance to attacks. The other encountered problem for the FIn whales nowadays is collisions with fast ships.
Commercial hunting of this whale is prohibited, although Iceland, Costa Rica and Greenland still hunt them.

Killer whale

Another species of cetacean that can be met at Hallaniyat islands is the Killer whale or Orca. Killer whales - a single species distributed throughout the world, is nevertheless divided into sedentary and wandering individuals, never interbreeding with each other and differing only in type of food. Settled killer whales eat fish and cephalopods, and wanderers also feed on pinnipeds and whales.
The killer whale is at the top of the food chain in the sea, which has no rivals. Killer whales use complex and diverse tactical schemes in hunting. The pack, headed by older females, consists of an average of 5-20 individuals. Inside the pack, all its members are very attached to each other, friendly and non-aggressive. Each pack has its own vocal dialect, which includes both sounds released only by animals of this group, and common to all killer whales. The average life time of killer whales is 50-60 years.
Killer whales are one of the few species of mammals (including humans) in which female individuals live for decades after they lose breeding ability and play the role of grandmothers teaching young animals and leading the packs.

Goliath Grouper

Goliath Grouper is an endangered species, due to the inordinate hunting for this fish throughout the world. Of all the Perciformes, the Goliath Grouper is the largest one, reaching 3.5m length or even more. Thus, the fish can weigh more than 600 kg.
The giant grouper is a predator, eating lobsters, fish, small sharks and rays, young sea turtles. Usually he lurks his victim in ambush: in the crevice of a rock, in thickets of algae or corals, in a cave, near a sunken ship, where the protective coloring makes it almost indistinguishable from the environment.

Blue Marlin

Blue marlin can reach a length of more than 4m and weigh about a ton. The range of its habitat is not tied to the coast. Marlins are found both in the shelf zone of continents and islands, and in the open ocean thousands of kilometers from the shore.
The structure of the body of blue marlin allows him to gain incredible speed in the water, which gives him the ability to hunt even for flying fish, inaccessible to most predators. It can accelerate to 100 km/h and more. Its prey is mainly small tuna, squid, lobsters, crabs, sea turtles.

Sailfish

The Sailfish has a tall and long blue fin that runs from the back of the neck almost along the entire back, like a sail, reaching 1.5m in height. Dimensions of fish can exceed 3m, and weight reaches 100kg. During movement, the sail fin is retracted into a special recess on the back of the fish. At sharp turns it is straightened, helping the fish to move in the necessary direction. Sailing fish has a negative buoyancy (for lack of a swim bladder). The body of the fish is covered with furrows from small outgrowths. Water is retained in these furrows. The water film covering the body of the sailfish significantly reduces the coefficient of friction. The sharp jaws of the fish make it possible to achieve the effect of turbulence, and the tail fin, having the shape of a narrow crescent, oscillates with great speed. This structure of the fish provides it with priority in high-speed swimming among all water creatures.
The sail-fin of this fish also plays the role of a radiator, cooling the blood of the fish. There are many small blood vessels in the fin. With huge accelerations, the straightened fin helps the fish to cool.
Spawning of the Sailfish takes place in warm waters from August to September. For one spawning season, the female Sailfish lays up to 100 million eggs.
This wonderful fish feeds on small fishes - anchovies, sardines, mackerel, and also molluscs and crustaceans. Life expectancy of the fastest fish reaches 13 years.
Fishing on the Sailfish is prohibited in most countries of the world.

Hallaniyat islands

A paradise of untouched dive sites, home to pristine corals, wrecks, 13 kinds of whales and dolphins, tuna, barracuda, mackerel, sailfish, marlin, swordfish, giant snapper and goliath grouper, kingfish, milkfish, giant octopus and cuttlefish, giant oceanic manta, honeycomb moray eel, green turtles, myriads of reef fish. New dive sites and wrecks can be discovered all the time. The islands boast a healthy marine life with awesome coral gardens where fish can be seen in thousands. Hallaniyat Islands are an undiscovered diving region where everything can be expected!



Important Note

The time, sites and ports of this itinerary are subject to change at any time without prior notice due to weather conditions or other factors. Direct transfers to/from the yacht are always included. Egyptian Cruising Company reserves the right to cancel the booking for the safety of passengers if it is not possible to change the time and route due to poor weather conditions.