Reefs & wrecks

Red Sea Dive Sites

Browse the Red Sea's coral reefs and historic wrecks — search, filter and explore them on the map.

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Hurghada 36 Dahab 17 Makadi Bay 3 Marsa Alam 1 Safaga 1 Sharm el-Sheikh 1 Aqaba 5

49–60 of 64 sites

Reef100 m

Small Giftun

Hurghada

Small Giftun is dived off the south side of the island by the police station, where a plateau at 15 to 25 m carries the moorings. At its northeast corner the plateau turns into a shelf running north, and that shelf ends at a steep wall dropping past 100 m, which is the part technical divers come for.

All levels

Reef

Small Giftun Napoleon Area

Hurghada

The Napoleon Area is a named stretch of the Small Giftun reef rather than a site of its own, on the exposed east side of the island 1.1 km south of Erg Somaya. It carries the name because napoleon wrasse are resident along it.

All levels

Reef35 m

South Abu Ramada

Hurghada

South Abu Ramada is the reef south of the small islet and three large boulders standing detached from the southern end of Abu Ramada Island. The seabed between its pinnacles is not sand but a bare, compacted concretion, which is why the site looks so empty between structures and so crowded on them.

All levels

Wreck21 m

Suzanna

Hurghada

The Suzanna is where divers out of Hurghada learn to go inside a wreck. She is small, a twin-masted motor sailer of about 22 m, sitting upright on sand roughly 100 m off the beach, and her interior is simple enough that working through it is a training exercise rather than a risk. She was built as a dive charter called Excalibur and run by the Susanah Diving Centre, which is where the site name comes from; operators still list her as Excalibur, Susana and Suzanna. An electrical fire took her in Hurghada harbor in February 1996. El Minya lies 1.2 km north-northeast, the same harbor and the opposite kind of wreck dive: 32 m in current for experienced divers against 21 m on a training line.

AdvancedNight dive

Reef55 m

The Canyon

Dahab

The Canyon is a fault in the reef, opened by an earthquake in the Gulf of Aqaba, running north to south and dropping to 54 m. Divers inside it are under rock, and their exhaled air does not surface where they are: it works up through the fissured limestone and comes out of the seabed in streams some distance away, so the reef appears to be venting. The mouth sits at 18 to 20 m, with further openings at 30 m and at 53 to 55 m, and the chamber at the seaward end is packed tight enough with glassfish to be called the Fish Bowl.

ExpertNight dive

Wreck30 m

Thistlegorm

Sharm el-Sheikh

The Thistlegorm was destroyed by her own cargo. A German bomber found her at anchor in Sha'ab Ali in October 1941, and the bombs set off the ammunition stowed in hold 4. The explosion tore the stern apart and threw the two locomotives she carried on deck clear of the ship, and they lie on the sand on either side of the hull. That is why the wreck reads so plainly on the bottom: the damage shows exactly what was in her.

Expert

Reef20 m

Three Corners House Reef

Marsa Alam

Three Corners House Reef is the shore reef of the Three Corners Equinox Beach Resort north of Marsa Alam, and it is in this catalogue for one reason: dugongs. Nine of the dugong photographs held here were taken on this reef, more than from any other site in the collection. The animals come in to graze the seagrass beds on the sandy bottom, and the feeding trails they plow through the meadow stay visible long after they have moved off.

AdvancedDrift

Reef25 m

Three Pools

Dahab

Three Pools is three natural basins in the reef, 3 to 4 m deep, linked to one another by coral saddles and to the open sea by a sandy alley. Being that shallow is what makes the site and what threatens it: snorkelers can reach everything in it, and the traffic over the pools has worn the coral in a way the deeper sites here have escaped. Beyond the alley a coral garden runs at 20 to 25 m.

Advanced

Reef12 m

Tobia arbaa

Hurghada

Tobia Arbaa means four, and there are seven, which is why the site is also called the Seven Pinnacles. The ergs are unusually tall and narrow for this coast, standing on sand at 12 m in a tight group like a stand of sawn-off tree trunks, and their overhangs rather than their tops are what hold the life.

All levels

Reef15 m

Tobia soraya

Hurghada

Tobia Soraya is three connected chains of ergs meeting in an inverted Y on white sand at 12 to 15 m, joining Tobia Kebir at their northern end. The layout is both the appeal and the problem: the ergs repeat closely enough that moving between them without a compass is guesswork.

All levels

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

Reef

Tropitel Beach

Hurghada

Tropitel Beach is the beach reef at the Tropitel resort on the Sahl Hasheesh coast, sitting between Sahl Hasheesh Marina 2.5 km to the north and Makadi Bay 3.4 km to the south, with Ras Disha 2.3 km north-northeast.

All levels