Liveaboards and diving safaris in Egypt & Sudan
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Location: Red Sea / Egypt / St. John’s
Description: Reef / Coral Garden
Depth: 8 – 26 m
Dangerous reef is the most southerly of the St. John’s reefs dived from Egypt. This is one of the few dive sites in the Southern Red Sea that offer a reasonably shallow flat bottom. This makes it good for an overnight anchorage and night diving. This is a medium sized, diamond shape reef. The hard coral wall drops down to around 18 meters where there is a gently sloping sandy bottom with small coral heads. A family of napoleon wrasse and free-swimming morays are common in this area. The topography here makes for great swim-throughs. There are many breaks in the reef shallows that allow easy and safe penetration.
A long chain of reefs, about 6 km long, with a diversity of bays, wonderful canyons and labyrinth of underwater reefs. Marvelous big and undamaged corals with fantastic colors.
Heading further south to the Sudanese border is an unexplored region which has a few surprises in store for divers. This is the true deep south and this is virgin territory. The charts are fairly inaccurate and many non-marked reefs suddenly appear out of nowhere, making navigation particularly hazardous.
The first immediately noticeable fish are the huge humphead parrotfish.
Among the hard corals are a profusion of brightly coloured chromis and damselfish. Every now and then a huge expanse of hard coral is broken by clumps of red-footed anemones and the attendant clownfish. In deeper water there is the usual Red Sea life, with nothing particularly different. A noticeable exception, however, is the sea bed, where cone shells appear to be thriving.
The main dive sites are about a day’s steam away from St John’s Reef with the season virtually all year round, but the challenge lies in persuading a like-minded group to join you on a trip with so few certainties.
The presence of sharks in this region is unique with encounters of some species not usually seen in the Red Sea such as the Mako. It shows that this unexplored region still has a few surprises in store for divers.
A week at sea, gently rocking with the boat, sailing among small islands. Skyblue sea as far as the eye can see, sunrays caress your skin, you read a book, listen to your iPod, lay back comfortably in your sunchair and relax until your next dive. Your thoughts are still around the fish from your previous dive but you already look forward to the next one. A week of worryfree holiday when your shisha is prepared for you by the crew every evening after the delicious dinner and while you take puffs from the apple flavoured tobacco, your only thought is you wish this week would never end!
Your filled-up tank always waits for you in its usual place, tasty food is prepared and ready for you. At night you contemplate whether to sleep under the starry night or spend the quiet night in your cabin. You are bound to relax here – it’s all about that in the middle of the sea. Yet there will be so many adventures and great experiences to remember about this week that you will talk about for a long time to come.
Which itineraries should you try? All of them! If you love wrecks, then choose our North safaris which you can combine with a Tiran itinerary. If you long for calmer seas and less crowded dive sites, then you should try our Safaga area safaris. At Borthers, Daedalus and Elphinstone you will enjoy a real shark adventure! And on a St. Johns safari – well, anything could happen. J But if you wish to experience something new, then your choice must be Elba.
The possibilities are endless! If you are out of ideas, call us and we will help!
Location: Egypt / South
Description: Reef / Coral garden / Wreck
Depths: 30 meters
This horseshoe-shaped reef lies in open water to the northeast of Ras Banas. The eastern side of the reef has a steeply sloping wall profile, giving way to a sandy slope scattered with coral heads and pinnacles toward the reef’s southeast corner. The southern pinnacles are especially rich, with a wide variety of coral types throughout. The varied hard coral composition of the heads and pinnacles acts as a base for some extremely nice soft coral growth, particularly dendronephthia.
Fish life here is excellent. Schooling fish of all types are seen in large numbers, while reef-dwellers, such as angelfish and butterflies, provide flashes of color. Cuttlefish and shrimps put in an appearance for the invertebrates, and bluespotted and blackspotted stingrays are common. Sharks of several types can also frequently be spotted here, and there are regular reports of dolphins along the reef or inside the lagoon.
Location: Egypt / South
Description: Reef / Coral garden / Wreck
Depths: 18 meters
Abu Galawa Shiwayya is a crescent shaped reef with a turquoise blue lagoon or pool enclosed within the reef towards its leeward side. Galawa is the name which refers to this turquoise colour of the blue pool. Abu in Arabic means ‘Father’ and Shiwayya means ‘Small’. Therefore a rough translation of this site name would be – Small Father of Turquoise Blue Water.
To the western end of the main crescent shaped reef is a smaller reef piece with gullies and swim-throughs in it. On the southwest side of this is the wreck of small sailboat at the base of the reef, which lies on its starboard side in 18m of water on a sandy sea floor.
