Best Dahab dive sites

The Red Sea has always been a go-to destination for divers. The combination of year round warm waters and abundant coral and fish life has drawn visitors here for many years. Dahab is a great Red Sea resort for beginners and experienced divers alike and at only 5 hours flight away, it’s an easy place to get to as well. Read on to learn about the best Dahab dive sites, and what you can expect from each.

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Best Dahab dive sites

Lighthouse

The Lighthouse dive site is renowned not only because it’s right in the main bay but because it really is the perfect Dahab dive spot, a sheltered location with easy in and out options. Most PADI Open water courses start here, on sandy slopes with great visibility, clear blue waters and many fish types including Lionfish, Unicorn fish and a resident Hawksbill Turtle called George. The bay is also home to many schools of fish such as Banner Fish and Silversides in summer as well as beautiful pinnacles of table corals.

Eel Garden

Situated just five minutes from Dahab, the fantastical Eel Garden is named after a Medusa’s nest of sand eels that populate sandy slopes and swaying fields of sea grass. The underwater lunar landscapes leave folk speechless and the shallow nature of the dive (maximum depth 18 metres) help to make Eel Garden a photographer’s dream, with a shallow reef wall and pinnacles providing ideal light alongside an abundance of subject matter.

Islands

These two huge coral formations feature well over 100 different types of coral and several of the Red Sea’s largest coral colonies as well as parrotfish, triggers, barracuda, trevallies and even blue spotted stingrays. A wide reef plateau requires Islands to be best negotiated at high tide with a series of hard coral pools and a sandy road leading through cabbage, brain and labyrinth coral colonies, adding to the action at less than 20 metres.

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Canyon

Situated south of Blue Hole, Canyon was formed by ancient seismic activity that caused a huge rift in the reef table. From outside it can be intriguing and from inside you’ll see a ceiling of beautiful blue hues decorated in fishes enjoying a curtain of bubbles. For shallow divers there’s a drift dive past the Canyon, via a beautiful coral garden, alongside Red Sea walkman, Red Sea anemone and everyone’s favourite, Nemo! Sorry, clownfish.

Ras Abu Galum

The high mountains, sand dunes, and raised fossil reefs of Ras Abu Galum National Park are virtually untouched and present an authentic insight into Bedouin culture. As you can only access this area via a camel trek or boat ride it’s incredibly remote and provides shallow, deep, wall and drift dives amongst a profusion of brightly coloured fish and corals.

Blue Hole

The Blue Hole, accessed via Bell Tower, is one of the Red Sea’s most famous dives and features a semi open tunnel which leads down to the start of a drift dive which takes you across a huge sink hole. Blue Hole is only for experienced advanced level divers that have had a thorough check dive and have mastered their neutral buoyancy. This is one of those dives that will leave you gasping and then wanting to turn around and do it all over again.

Gabr El Bint

Thanks to its remote location, Gabr El Bint is one of the coastline’s rarely dived sites and can only be accessed via an hour-long boat safari. However, once you’re immersed there’s a real treat in store with an extensive garden of Gorgonian fans from a depth of 20 metres and a series of shelters and sand valleys to be found either side of the hard coral buttress above.

Best Dahab dive sites

“Diving is the closest you can get to zero gravity without leaving the Earth's atmosphere. Being able to float mid water, neutrally buoyant, is amazing enough but mix in the blue sea, colourful fish and the vibrant and diverse corals and you’re immersed in the most amazing new world that you’ll want to visit again and again.” – Lynne Helal-Gillis, manager of Dive Urge, a Responsible Travel tour partner since 2003.

If you’re hoping to get your water wings or you’re already an experienced diver, the Bedouin fishing village of Dahab, on the Sinai Peninsula’s southeast coast, has unlimited shore dives as well as an authentic ambience a world away from the ‘charms of Sharm’. Diving holidays in Dahab don’t just offer the chance to explore below the surface, they invite you to live in a vibrant village with families, kids, goats, camels and a wide range of international travellers who have also decided to make the village their home.

“We saw all types of fish from stingrays,eels, clownfish and lionfish along with larger shoals of silver and glass fish, which swarm around you in large numbers. Gopros were made available for us so that we could have all our underwater adventures photographed.” – Maggie Carruthers, from our traveller reviews

Dahab is reckoned to have some of the healthiest, most vibrant and most resilient coral reefs in the Middle East. Which means it’s incredibly important to keep them so, with climate change, pollution and inconsiderate dive operators all posing threats. Travelling with a responsible operator ensures that not only are you kept safe and well-trained, but that protecting the reefs and their inhabitants is the absolute priority.

If you’re hoping to discover what lies beneath the beaches and learn a new skill to keep for life, then what are you waiting for? Dive right in.

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Written by Rob Perkins

Best Dahab dive sites