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| Ship passing through the Straits of Tiran - Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Al Reuters |
Aljazeera tells us that the UN is withdrawing their peacekeeping force from the Straits of Tiran and installing cameras to keep an eye on things, so maybe things have calmed down here. But just where are the Straits of Tiran? So off to Google Maps we go.
The Straits of Tiran are at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba where it joins the Red Sea. It's not a vital shipping lane, unless you are Israel or Jordan who both have ports at the northern end of the Gulf. Jordan has a large oil terminal there, which might be where the ship in the first photo is coming from.
I was surprised by Jordan's presence there. I shouldn't have been, Jordan forms Israel's entire eastern border except the most northern portion, but you never hear anything about Jordan, it's like it doesn't exist.
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| Straits of Tiran, Tiran and Sanafir Islands |
The Straits of Tiran are narrow, only about two miles wide and there are reefs in the middle. The islands look pretty desolate, but on the western (Egyptian) shore we have a bunch of resorts.
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| Party at Jackson Reef Island in the background is the same one as in the first photo |
I am looking at some street view images hoping to find a view of the pier that is in the first photo on this post, and this pops up. At first glance it looks like a typical drunken boat party, but if you take in the whole 360 degree view you see that the boats are almost entirely empty.
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| Divers at Jackson Reef |
Turns out they are dive boats for tourists from the resorts and all the people are underwater. The sea life on the reefs is pretty spectacular.
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| Piers |
I wasn't able to locate the pier on Google Maps until I realized that there were lines crossing a large green area adjacent to the shore and I realized that it was shallow water, not land, and those lines were light duty piers suitable for people to walk on, not for freight.
P.S. I thought I had looked at this part of the world once before but I couldn't remember why. Then I clicked on the place mark on the resort and all was revealed. The Super Tucanos stopped there on their round the world delivery flight.
2 comments:
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Heya -- south of the straits of Tiran the Bab el-Mandab straits are the entrance to the Red Sea. They are likewise narrow and during the Yum Kippur War they were also blocked by Somalia and South Yemen backed by Egypt.
When the Yom Kippur war started I was aboard a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin off of Vietnam. Our entire task force left and crossed the Indian Ocean to protect shipping and project force in the area of the Persian and Aden Gulfs. The boat I was on ended up running that blockade which de facto lifted it.
My boat ended up in Massawa, then part of Ethiopia, now Eritrea. I first learned how to water-ski in the Red Sea during that port call. Strange days.
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