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Jacques Cousteau called it the corridor of
marvels; for European divers it is simply
our favorite destination. More of us dive
here than anywhere else. It is the nearest
warm water to us, but its lure is about
much more than convenience. The Red Sea
is a classic dive destination — a must-see no
matter where in the world you live.
Variety is the Red Sea’s trump card. The
place offers such diversity of high-quality
underwater adventures that “Red Sea diving”
means something different to everyone. It
is a hugely popular destination that offers
classic reef diving, coral caverns, shark dives,
big wrecks, tech diving, freediving and even
critter-rich muck diving. With multiple
resort hubs split between the main Egyptian
coast and the Sinai Peninsula combined with
a variety of liveaboard itineraries, there are
endless ways to do it. In short, I have a lot to
shoehorn into this article.
Five Star Jackson
Throaty Arabic shouting curdles amidst
diesel smoke in the chaotic Travco Marina
in Sharm El Sheikh. We swiftly file through
the melee and step onto the haven that is our
dive boat. Lots of divers means lots of diving
infrastructure; the downside is that there
are more peaceful places to start your day.
Soon we’re out of port and heading north
to the marvels of the Strait of Tiran. Dive
boats in Egypt tend to be large, white affairs
with a saloon inside and a sundeck up top,
which makes the typical two-tank trips very
spacious and comfortable.
At Jackson Reef I giant stride from the
dusty desert atmosphere, and I’m in paradise.
The first dive of any Red Sea trip is always
magical because of the intensity of the
transition from the barren landscape to the
reef’s richness. This reef just screams Red
Sea to me: the vertical walls are hung with
soft corals, most in characteristic bright
red, and dancing around them in the gentle
current are thousands of anthias, which
always seem much bigger and more purely
orange in the Red Sea. Set against the bright,
almost electric-blue water, it is a stunning
and specific color palette that is unmistakably
Egypt. There are places with greater reef
diversity or with a wider range of colors and
shapes that contribute to the scene, but to
my eyes it is the compositional simplicity and
intensity of these primary hues that makes
these reefs the most beautiful in the world.
We drift past scores of reef fish to see a
hawksbill turtle munching on yellow soft
corals, a big school of green unicornfish and
a tartan longnose hawkfish in a huge seafan.
While we’re floating along on our safety
stop, a scalloped hammerhead cruises past,
effortlessly moving against the current 30
feet below us. The far side of Jackson Reef
is well known for schooling hammerheads,
and liveaboards often make a dawn dive out
into the blue in an attempt to see them. It is a
bonus to see one near the coral garden.
Poles Apart
Tiran is the farthest north that liveaboards can
go in Egypt, and its reefs are quite a bit different
than those 400 miles away in Egypt’s “deep
south.” St John’s Reef is a collection of shallower
sites incorporating coral pinnacles and extensive
caverns. The pinnacles are a fabulous spot for
reef life; I particularly like late-afternoon dives
here when the anemones begin to close and
offer up the chance to photograph the resident
Red Sea anemonefish against their Ferrari-red
anemone skirts. The shallow caverns of St John’s
also captivate photographers, who regularly
spend hours there trying obsessively to capture
perfect beams of sunlight. I never manage it.
TEXT AND PHOTOS By
Alex Mustard, Ph.D.
The Red Sea is a 1,400-mile-long, narrow, and more than 7000-foot-deep offshoot of the Indian Ocean that divides the continents
of Africa and Asia. Surrounded by desert, it is bathed in sunshine for 365 days of the year. Despite reaching a latitude about as far
north as Orlando, extensive coral reefs thrive. Its comparatively northerly location and its isolation from the rest of the Indo-Pacific
give it a distinct character among coral seas: it is strongly seasonal and has a high number of endemic species.
Red Sea diving is about diversity, but if there is
an emblem it is surely the bright orange female
anthias that throng on every reef. Below from the top:
impressive soft coral growth in the Strait of Tiran,
bottlenose dolphins at Abu Nuhas and a frogfish
nestled among soft corals on the coast of Sinai