What's Feefo? You may have come across it if you were buying clothes or the like. Feefo has expanded their service to the travel industry so, as we welcome your opinion on how you think we are doing, we signed up so you can tell us.

Feefo is entirely independent and monitors our guests' feedback on the service they have received from us and then shows them online for all to see - whatever the feedback.

A big thank you to all who have used Feefo so far, it helps us to continually improve our service.

Heads up on our EURO 2012 FOOTBALL in the RED SEA deals. June 8 to July 1.

Join us in any of our Red Sea resorts to watch your favourite match. No need to travel to Poland...travel to the Red Sea and celebrate with some fabulous dives (we can do commiserations too).
 
On the other hand, you might want to escape the football fever and we can do that too. Pure diving and pure relaxation. Emperor has a deal that offers value, quality and fun.

 
Day Diving                         5 day's diving from only €150     
Dive Courses                     POW Course from only €234            
Hotel/Diving Packages        7 nts twin BB + 5 day's diving + transfers from €275 pp
Liveaboard                        1 week, inc transfers, twin share, from €750

Note: Prices shown represent  'prices from' and may not be available in all resorts.

Email reservations@emperordivers.com today for a great result!

Rob Atherton recently went diving with Emperor Sharm and wrote this great blog for easyJet, which we’d like to share with you here...

When I left for a week’s diving in Sharm el Sheikh with Emperor Divers, I wasn't really sure what to write about so I decided to let Egypt surprise and inspire me. I've dived in Sharm many times over the last eight years and I'd always felt that for anyone in search of smaller 'macro' subjects to photograph, the resorts of Taba and Nuweiba further up the Sinai were a better option. However, this was a week that the dive sites of Sharm really delivered for me and my trusty underwater camera.

I could write about the Manta Rays we saw at the local dive sites of Tower and Middle Garden or perhaps the encounter with the beautiful white Rissos dolphins. I even found the elusive Longnose Hawkfish, which hides in the Gorgonian Fans, not once but twice. This shy little fish is normally skittish and hard to photograph but the one I saw on Thomas Reef in the Straits of Tiran was virtually posing for photos.

While these experiences were all part of a wonderful week with Emperor Divers, the most amazing thing for me was the variety of nudibranchs, flatworms and the like I discovered.

The most common of these colourful little slugs I've found in the past is the Pyjama Slug (or Chromodoris Quadcolour). It is a colourful creature with yellow, white, black and blue stripes and can be found on all the dive sites in Sharm. If my memory serves me correctly, I've only ever seen two or possibly three different varieties of nudibranchs but in just five day’s diving, I found 14 different varieties.

As a diver who takes a lot of photos, I think Nudis are great. They are colourful, so look great in pictures, they are , making them much easier to take pictures of than fish and a lot of divers don't always see them making my pictures look a bit more impressive. Last October, I had my first diving trip out to the Far East where Nudis are plentiful so on this trip to Sharm, I was determined to seek out more.

Over the course of the week, the dive boats took me to the Straits of Tiran, Ras Mohammed National Park and the local dive sites close to Na'ama Bay. Many people ignore the local sites but I've always found them to be excellent places to see marine life. My first day was in Tiran and although I had a good couple of dives, I didn't find any nudibranchs. The next day in Ras Mohammed, the Nudis were out in force.

The first nudi I saw was a Chromodoris Africana. It looks similar to a Pyjama Slug but after looking at photos that evening, I realised it was in fact a different species. I've probably made the same mistake a number of times in the past but never noticed. From this point on, I was seeing nudibranchs on most dives, many of which I'd never seen before.

A big advantage of taking pictures of the nudibranchs is that the colours are much more striking than seeing them at 20m on a dive site. Of the 14 varieties I found, my favourite was the Big Horn Nembrotha, which was the most beautifully coloured of them all that I've seen in Egypt and elsewhere. Even though, I've dived in Sharm many times over the years, it has once again turned up plenty of new discoveries and surprises. I'm already looking forward to my next trip.

Rob Atherton

PS And a big thank you to Emperor Divers’ Facebook friends who helped me ID this nudi that had me flummoxed! Yvette Tucker spotted the Hallaxa indecora. Not easy from this pic!

Wonderful news for Emperor Divers in Sharm! Our Instructor Trainer, Steve Prior, has just been awarded the level of "Platinum Course Director for 2012".

This year only 57 Course Directors in the whole world have reached this level. Steve has been awarded the "Platinum" award every year since it started in 2006.

Great news for Emperor, but what does this mean for you? It means that if you are thinking about becoming a PADI instructor with Emperor Divers, you will be trained by a Course Director who is "Match Fit" and you'll know that you will be getting the very best training that can be found anywhere in the world. Steve is very popular, and you don't need to look far to find excellent, successful instructors who have been taught by him.

Steve is pictured here with Janet his IDC Staff Instructor wife, together they make "Prior Knowledge".

You can ask Steve any questions on idc@emperordivers.com

Join the team as they head out from Marsa Alam to dive on the wreck of Hamada as well as dive sites Marsa Mubarak, Ras el Torfa and Shouni Kebir. Great diving in the Red Sea...

In support of HEPCA Earth Day and Beach Clean up on Sunday 22 April, each of our dive centres will be organising its own clean up for guests who want to take part.

Details of how you can get involved will be provided by your dive centre locally - so do ask and help to make a difference.

By Mat Cotton, Manager, Emperor El Gouna

It comes to that time of the year after Christmas, New Year and Easter eggs, following an over-indulgence of too much booze and rich food, that I’ve noticed that I may have gained a pound or two. The only reason I actually noticed this was because my drysuit no longer fits me. We all know that drysuits will shrink after being left for an extended period without use (don’t they?) but mine has ‘shrunk’ to an extent that I can’t even get it on, never mind zip it up!

So, rather than spend loads of hard-earned (!) cash on a new one, I’ve decided that I need to lose some weight. As I used to have the body of a diamond-cut Adonis (my wife is laughing over my shoulder as I write this, it must have been before we met!), I’ve finally realised that it’s time I got back down to a size 32 waist. I headed down to my local gym to see what they can offer but it turns out the best thing I could do to lose weight at the gym was to lighten my pockets by a few hundred quid. Being from up t’north, and therefore rather ‘careful’ with money, this was immediately kyboshed in favour of me exercising at home – which is free. 

After a bit of research on the web, and some distractions of rather fitter bodies than mine, it turns out that one of the best ways to burn calories is to do something that we all love – diving! Great, that’ll save me money on having to buy some new trainers as well then.

According to glamour.com – which I was looking at as research, honest – diving is one of the best sports to keep fit whilst having fun at the same time. Looking back on it, I can’t see why this has never occurred to me before. I have always put on a bit of weight over Christmas (my ‘winter stores’ as I call it) when I am not in the water as much, then always lost this over summer when I diving daily, with no change in diet, or importantly, drinking habits. It turns out that during an average hour-long dive, you can burn up to 650 calories! 650 calories! That’s the same as using a cycling machine in the gym for an hour!

Of course, in order to lose weight, it means I also have to cut out the post-pub Burger King on a Saturday evening but after some quick calculations, I can lose weight by eating a little more healthily and just diving! Whilst this remains to be seen, it is a fact that diving is a great workout for your body. It won’t help you build body mass, but to tone and trim, diving is ideal. Diving helps you tone the muscles in your thighs and calves (as anyone who has had to swim against anything other than a mild current will attest to) as well as your gluteus maximus (that’s your bottom). Diving is also a great cardiovascular workout and studies have shown that divers in general have a larger lung volume and vital capacity than non-divers.  

And it’s not just me. It’s a new fitness trend that our celebrity friends are doing too. Jessica Alba, Katie Holmes, Sandra Bullock, that woman from ‘The Vampire Diaries’, Martin Clunes; they’re all doing it. "Scuba diving provides a full body workout that combines cardio and strength training to burn calories, tone muscles and even improve breathing," says Theresa Kaplan, director of communications for The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). "Although your body is buoyant underwater and you feel virtually weightless while scuba diving, manoeuvring through water requires constant motion by your entire body, thus toning and strengthening muscles in your thighs, shoulders and your core.

" Just remember though, like any sport, it’s important to warm up, stretch and stay hydrated, especially if you come out to dive with Emperor in the Egyptian heat.  "Although you may not feel it underwater, you are actually sweating and exerting energy while scuba diving, so it’s important to stay hydrated during your diving excursion," Kaplan says. "Getting plenty of rest and stretching beforehand will also help prevent any cramping underwater and will allow you to swim through the waters with ease."

So, next time you’re out diving in the Red Sea and you see some idiot swimming against the current during your drift dive, don’t worry, that’s probably just me burning off those extra Sakaras. All I have to do now is convince Jessica Alba to join me.

Of course, if you would care to join me then please do so. There's more about diving El Gouna right here...

An exciting opportunity has arisen for two enthusiastic MSDT Instructors to join our Dive Centre, based as the Hilton Plaza in Hurghada. Plus, for approximately 12 weeks of the year, you will also work on our liveaboards.

As instructors and experienced divers, you will be confident in both teaching and guiding guests of all certification levels. Get in touch with us if you have excellent interpersonal skills, great team spirit and an enthusiasm for diving that will bring our guests back for more.

Both couples and single diving instructors are welcome to apply. It's essential that you can speak fluent Spanish, Russian and English. Additional European languages are an advantage.

The successful candidates will be offered a 1 year contact and will receive salary and commission.

Please send your CV, including languages spoken and recent photograph, to human.resources@emperordivers.com and quote reference ED103.

Thanks. We look forward to hearing from you.

Here's the latest on the fabulous makeover of Emperor Superior. She's out of dry dock and sporting lots of new features. Follow her progress here...

Every year our day diving boats and liveaboards go into dry dock for a total overhaul. We thought you would be interested to see what happens while the boat is 'out of the water' and follow Superior as she went through her recent major refit.

You can see more - and the photos - here.

By Tarkan Sever and Kathrin Heussner

It has been well over a year since we started working for Emperor Divers Nuweiba. It was December 2010, fresh out of the IDC with Steve Prior in Sharm el Sheikh, when we got the job offer to work for Emperor Divers Nuweiba as Instructor and Staff Instructor.

As the idea of working in Egypt had not even crossed our minds, we could only imagine back then how fortunate we were to join Chris Le Plongeon’s team. Very quickly we realized how special the Nuweiba dive sites are.

First of all, it‘s all easy shore diving and you usually have the whole dive site to yourselves! All at a relaxed Nuweiba pace. But the main reason we fell in love with this place is the diversity of marine life found condensed on these reefs. It‘s not unusual to find a grey moray eel with its tail twisted around an undulated moray eel, resting on a porcupine puffer next to a stone fish, which is just being cleaned by various types of shrimps.

During the different seasons our favourite dive sites change according to the special appearances found on each of them. But the house reef Abou Lou Lou is always number one. Having dived it hundreds of times it still brings new surprises. We have been lucky to see various types of frogfish and ghost pipefish as well as shrimps, nudibranchs, sea horses, turtles, mimic octopus just to name a few. During a fish ID dive we easily spot 50-80 different species of fish. What a paradise! A heaven for photographers, repeat guests and beginners alike. The diving in Nuweiba is definitely unique and we have memories of countless special moments!

Now a new opportunity awaits us as we head further south where we will be working for Emperor Divers Marsa Alam, joining Luke Atkinson’s team. We are so enjoying exploring the dive sites and marine life in this region, especially with the opening of the new dive centre where the possibilities seem endless.

We would like to take the opportunity to say, Thank You! to all of you who dived with us in Nuweiba. It was a great pleasure to meet you.

And now we look forward to meeting you on your diving holiday in Marsa Alam. Don’t wait too long!

Kathrin and Tarkan