Dugong

Discover the best time to dive the Red Sea

Cousteau called it a ‘Corridor of Marvels’ because of the amazing abundance of life and the Red Sea certainly lives up to its name.

Its soft coral walls and hard coral gardens covered in myriads of colourful fish, its crystal clear visibility for most of the year and the intense light make the Red Sea a truly phenomenal place. And then there is the big fish and mammals department.

Where else can you have the chance to snorkel and dive with dolphins all year round? Bottlenose dolphins are so friendly and playful, often interacting with divers at Gubal, Abu Nuhas and Shaab el Erg. Then there’s the chance to snorkel with spinner dolphins in southern lagoons like Sataya and Samadai. Encounters with dolphins can happen in any reef though, for example at the Brother Islands, Elphinstone, Daedalus, Rocky and Zabargad, the Thistlegorm, the Rosalie Moller to name but a few.

Snorkelling and diving with the almighty dugong is also possible, mainly in bays north and south of Marsa Ghalib Port where its main diet of sea grass grows.

And then there are the sharks. White tip reef sharks can be seen all year round on most reefs.

Grey reef sharks are also a permanent feature of the off shore islands as well as most walls, even those that are close to shore.

The shy thresher sharks can be seen mainly at the Brother Islands and at Daedalus Reef, mostly in deeper water and all year round. They tend to be off-shore sharks but they do come to the reefs to make use of the cleaning stations and to feed.

Longimanus

Individual hammerheads visit the Brothers but can also be found at reefs closer to shore like Tiran Straits, Ras Mohamed, outer Safaga Reefs, Shaab Sharm, outer Fury Shoal Reefs, St Johns, Rocky and Zabargad. Some tend even to be resident to a spot, like the one we often see off the wreck of the Numidia at the Big Brother Island.

The north side of Jackson Reef at Tiran is famous for schooling hammerheads but Daedalus is definitely our schooling hammerhead hot spot, especially because they have been known to be quite interactive with humans. At Tiran the best time to see them is the summer months, while at Daedalus they are typically shallow from May to June and then get progressively deeper during the summer and autumn months and less visible during the winter.

Oceanic white tip sharks are common in the colder months, September through to June, at the off shore islands of Brothers, Elphinstone and at St Johns Reefs but have also been spotted around Sharm El Sheikh or even at coral gardens close to deep water areas.
We also get whale shark and manta sightings that can happen all year around, especially frequently in the Sharm El Sheikh area and the offshore islands but they can turn up on any reef; one sighting was on the shallow coral garden of Samadai Reef.

There are also occasional black tip oceanic sharks at Ras Mohamed, as well as tiger sharks on many reefs like Elphinstone, Rocky, Panorama Reef, Carless Reef, among others. Silky sharks used to make frequent appearances at the Brothers and Daedalus but have been mostly replaced by Oceanic white tips.

So wherever you dive in this ‘Corridor of Marvels’ the chances are high that you will make a memory that will last a lifetime.

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