Reefs & wrecks

Dive sites in Aqaba

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

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5 sites

Al Shorouk

The Al Shorouk has barely changed since she went down in 2008, and depth is the reason. Her bow lies at 38 m and her stern at 55 to 60, too deep for the light that drives the growth which has buried every other wreck in Aqaba, so she still reads as a ship rather than as reef: plating clean, edges sharp, corrosion slight. She was built in Haifa in 1967 as a landing craft of 45 by 15 m and went through four names before this one, the last two Aqaba Star and Nour 3. Aqaba Marine Park scuttled her on June 18, 2008 and renamed her Al Shorouk, sunrise, for the new beginning they wanted for diving here.

Expert

Wreck27 m

Cedar Pride

Aqaba

The Cedar Pride did not land on sand. She lies intact on her port side with one reef under the bow and another under the stern, propped clear of the bottom in the middle, and the gap she leaves beneath her keel is a swim-through at 26 m. How she came to rest is what shapes every dive on her. She was a Spanish-built freighter of 74 m and 1,100 tons, launched in 1964 and sailing for a Lebanese line when a fire tore a hole in her at anchor in Aqaba port in July 1982. Prince Abdullah, later King Abdullah II and a diver himself, took an interest in the hulk, and after she was stripped of oil and anything else that could harm the reef she was scuttled here on November 16, 1985.

AdvancedNight dive

Wreck17 m

Hercules C-130

Aqaba

A Hercules is built to be as light as an airframe can be, and that is why this one did not last. The Royal Jordanian Air Force machine, 30 m long with a 40 m wingspan, was towed down from Amman and sunk 300 m off the shore on November 16, 2017, upright and intact in about 17 m of water. On the night of March 17, 2020 a gale ran into Aqaba, and the aluminum could not take the surge: the wings came off and dropped to the sand, the fuselage broke in two, and the nose was torn away and now lies elsewhere on the site. Only the tail came through more or less whole. A staged exhibit turned into an actual wreck in a single night, and it reads as one now in a way the intact aircraft never did.

Advanced

Wreck28 m

TriStar L-1011

Aqaba

The TriStar is a trijet, and its third engine sits in the tail, fed by an S-shaped duct that curves down through the fin to turn the airflow into the intake. Underwater that duct is a swim-through, and divers use it as the way out of the wreck. The aircraft is a Lockheed L-1011-500, 50 m long with a 50 m wingspan, resting upright on sand with the cockpit at 15 m and the tail at 28 m. It was delivered to Royal Jordanian in 1985, passed through five other airlines over the next twenty years, ended up parked at Aqaba's airport, and was bought by the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority and sunk on August 26, 2019, a few kilometers from where it had been standing.

Advanced

Wreck28 m

Underwater Military Museum

Aqaba

The vehicles are laid out in battle formation. When the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority put twenty-one decommissioned machines on the seabed in 2019 it did not scatter them: it arranged them as an advance, and depth stands in for distance. Willis jeeps sit at the front in about 7 m, the armor follows through 15 to 20 m, and the artillery and two Bell AH-1F Cobra helicopters hold the rear at 25 to 28 m. The hardware is British, American and South African, and the Jordanian Armed Forces ran all of it until 2000. It is the first underwater military museum in the world.

AdvancedNight dive