Reefs & wrecks

Dive sites in Dahab

Every site we have mapped around Dahab, Egypt — search, filter and explore them on the map.

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1–12 of 17 sites

Abu Helal

At Abu Helal the hardest part of the dive is getting in and out. The entry is a notch that takes the swell head on, so the site needs high water and a flat day, and groups that misjudge it spend the surface interval climbing over rock. What is on the other side is a semi-circular sandy lagoon at 7 to 12 m opening onto rolling coral hills, with a promontory to the north and a split in the reef that drops to 30 m.

AdvancedWall

Reef120 m

Abu Talha

Dahab

Abu Talha holds one of the better hard coral gardens in Sinai, and the coral is at its best between 5 and 20 m, which is the shallowest part of the site. Below that the hard coral runs down to 50 m in the centre, a sinkhole opens at 25 m off to the left, and a canyon of its own is entered at 20 m with its floor at 30 m. The ground outside falls away past 120 m.

ExpertDrift

Reef25 m

Bannerfish Bay

Dahab

Bannerfish Bay is partly built out of rubbish. Car tires and clay pots went into the bay over the years, and the reef took them: they now carry growth and hold animals in the same way the coral formations do, which is why a bay of sand, seagrass hills and scattered coral supports the species list it does. Sea moths live on the sand here, walking across it on modified pelvic fins rather than swimming, and they are the animal that brings photographers back.

AdvancedNight dive

Reef100 m

Blue Hole

Dahab

The Blue Hole is a sinkhole in the reef table, closed off from open water by a shallow saddle at about 6 m and bottoming out just over 100 m down. What kills people here is a tunnel. The Arch runs through the seaward wall with its ceiling at 55 m, and from inside the hole it looks under 10 m long; it has been measured at 26 m. At that depth on air a diver's judgment is already going, the far end is three times further off than it appeared, and there is no shallow exit anywhere along it. Estimates of the dead run from around 130 between 1997 and 2012 to more than 200 in total, and nobody has an accurate count because the deaths are not officially recorded. Memorial plaques left by families are fixed to the cliff above the path down to the water, each carrying a name, a date and an age.

ExpertWall

Reef28 m

Canyon Garden

Dahab

Canyon Garden is the shallow half of the Canyon, dived on its own. It shares a parking with the Canyon and the two entries are metres apart: the difference is that this dive never goes into the fissure. The garden lies between 5 and 10 m beyond the reef saddle, hard coral spread across sand, and it is where the divers who did go into the Canyon spend their remaining gas on the way out.

Advanced

Reef80 m

Caves

Dahab

Caves has a garden eel colony at 50 to 70 m. Garden eels normally live in shallow sand where light and current suit them, and a colony that deep is unusual enough to be the most interesting thing about the site, and also the part almost nobody sees, since it lies well below recreational depth. Above it the ground is a valley between two rises with a gentle slope down its middle, two overhangs at around 20 m, and a cave mouth at 30 m on the right.

Expert

Reef30 m

Eel Garden

Dahab

Eel Garden is named for a colony of several hundred Red Sea garden eels standing out of a white sand slope. Each one lives in a burrow it lines with mucus, feeds by holding itself into the current, and drops out of sight as anything large approaches, so the meadow closes ahead of a diver and reopens behind. Getting close enough to see the animals rather than the retreat is the whole exercise. The slope sits below a reef platform about 60 m across, reached through a winding channel, and a small cave at the top of the sand marks the way in.

AdvancedDrift

Reef50 m

El Bells

Dahab

El Bells is entered through a chimney. A narrow vertical fissure runs down through the reef table a short walk north of the Blue Hole, and a diver drops through it in the dark and comes out at 28 to 30 m on the face of an open wall, which is the whole point of the site: there is no slope, no plateau and no gradual start. The fissure widens toward the bottom into the shape that gives it the name. From the exit the dive runs south as a drift along a vertical wall of overhangs, fissures and swim-throughs, finishing in the Blue Hole over the shallow saddle.

AdvancedWall

Reef30 m

Golden Blocks

Dahab

Golden Blocks is two hard coral towers standing on a sandy slope, shallow enough that at low tide they can be picked out from the surface before anyone gets in the water. The colour they are named for is the coral itself. Around them the slope carries seagrass, smaller pinnacles and stretches of reef garden, and the whole site sits within recreational depth.

AdvancedPinnacles

Reef30 m

Islands

Dahab

Islands is a coral site rather than a fish site. Well over a hundred coral species grow here, among them some of the largest single colonies in the Red Sea, and the structure they have built is a labyrinth: a wide reef platform holding three hard coral pools with sandy floors, linked by valleys and corridors that a diver navigates rather than crosses. The 1995 earthquake opened part of the maze into its present shape.

AdvancedPinnacles

Reef70 m

Light House

Dahab

Light House is where most people who learn to dive in Dahab make their first descent. The bay in front of the lighthouse gives a flat sand bottom with hard coral towers standing on it and a reef edge that undulates rather than drops, so a diver can hold any depth wanted, and an earthquake in 1995 opened cracks in the reef that added structure to what was otherwise a training ground. Off the bay the bottom falls away to 70 m.

AdvancedNight dive

Reef38 m

Mashraba

Dahab

Mashraba is a sandy slope with one thing standing on it. Roman's Rock is a single bommie rising off the sand, and on a bottom that is otherwise seagrass and open ground it concentrates everything: the glassfish, the anthias, the predators that work them. Table coral formations sit at 20 m further out, a gorgonian fan stands on the slope, and a swim-through at 36 to 38 m marks the deep limit of the site.

AdvancedNight dive