Reefs & wrecks

Dive sites in Makadi Bay

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

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3 sites

Abu Hashish South Erg

Abu Hashish sits at the southern end of the Hurghada reefs near Makadi Bay, and its name describes the bottom rather than any cargo: hashish is seaweed in the local usage and abu is father, so the reef is named for the growth on the flats around it. The English homophone has given the site a smuggling legend it does not deserve. The site is built in two parts: a plateau of long hard coral formations at 15 to 25 m, and a drop-off beside it with caves cut into the face at 30 m.

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Reef40 m

Gota Abu Makadi

Makadi Bay

Gota Abu Makadi is a cluster of coral pinnacles standing on flat sand, each one separated from the next by open bottom. That separation is what shapes the dive: every pinnacle works as a closed system with its own anemones, its own cleaners and its own resident fish, so a second circuit of the same structure turns up animals missed on the first. Gota is the local word for exactly this, a coral head standing apart from the reef.

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Reef25 m

Makadi Bay House Reef

Makadi Bay

Makadi Bay House Reef is the most thoroughly documented site in this catalogue: 178 species have been photographed on it, four times the count from any other reef here. The reason is access rather than exceptional biology. The reef starts at the beach in front of the dive center and can be dived unguided at any hour, so the same ground gets worked over again and again and gives up what a single boat dive would never find.

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