Project Description
In this difficult time of uncertainties and fears I wonder what people think ..
affections, family, work, the future and how to survive ..
In addition to all this, I often find myself thinking about what I have been able to do in my life, the beauties of nature that I have had the privilege of seeing and the last vacation I took before the thought of not being able to enjoy of so much wonders again for long time, assailed me.
For years, since I was in Sharm, I have dreamed of seeing the siren of the seas, from which even Ulysses was enchanted, the Dugong.
Who claimed to have seen it in Snafir, the island behind Tiran, who claimed that his presence had never been noticed here in Sharm..
And the more time passed, the more I feared that I would not be able to fulfill this desire, also because the dugong does not show itself easily; it is a completely aquatic, shy, reserved, solitary herbivorous mammal that lives in the low-lying grasslands, is a species threatened by the changed conditions of its habitat and by hunting for its fat and its flesh.
Its body is massive and imposing, the head stocky and thick , the fleshy muzzle with two lips and large nostrils, the front limbs similar to fins and the rear ones transformed into caudal fin that widens into two symmetrical fins.
So, in September, following the coastal profile of East Africa, I arrived in Marsa Alam and in those waters I saw it, in all its majesty, while it grazed the seagrass and when it moved away from me, fast and light …
And giant green sea turtles at every dive from the beach of the Diving DE in Abudabbab, and longimanus in Elphinstone, spanish dancers and frogfish in the Extra Divers housereef, and further south, in Wadi Lahami, dolphins, immense expanses of hard corals and wrecks diving with the speed boat from the ecoresort Red Sea Diving Safari.
And now that I’m here, confined at home for the fear of contagion, the limitation of freedom seems less heavy, a freedom that my memory and my camera can make me find again when I want it.
Renata Romeo ©2020
(Forbidden the reproduction, even partial, of this text without the author’s consent)