Abu Dabab II

The dive

Abu Dabab II is one reef in a chain. Sha'ab Abu Dabbab is a group of six low reefs sitting just under the surface roughly 4 to 6 km off the coast, about 25 km south of Port Ghalib and 25 to 32 km north of Marsa Alam. Fishermen numbered them from north to south, which is where the names Wahid, Ithnain and Thalata come from; this entry is Ithnain, the second. Sources agree that reefs two and three are the pair everyone dives and that one to four, five and six are rarely visited, and no source found describes reef two on its own. Operators sell it as "Shaab Abu Dabbab 2 and 3", one half-day, two guided dives off a speedboat.

This is not the dugong bay. Marsa Abu Dabbab, the shallow seagrass bay on the shore that people book for dugongs and green turtles, is a different place a few kilometres west, and several listings blur the two. Nothing found puts dugongs on these offshore reefs; the seagrass they feed on is in the bay, not out here.

The dive itself is shallow and easy. Each reef carries a coral garden that runs from about 15 m up to within 4 m of the surface, and the working range is roughly 5 to 25 m. Between and around the reefs there are coral pinnacles, short canyons and small caverns to swim through, with hard coral fields at their best on the northern and north-western sides. Current is generally low to medium. Because Elphinstone is under 10 km away, a lot of boats use this reef as the shallow second dive after a deep morning there.

The wreck of the Heaven One lies at 14 m between reefs two and three: a liveaboard that caught fire and sank in 2005. One operator is blunt that it is not much to look at, with most of the superstructure destroyed or rotted, but it is a short and harmless detour. For life, expect twoband anemonefish in their anemones, blackspotted rubberlip and blackspot snapper, batfish, giant moray, blue-spotted reef stingray, coronation trout, greasy grouper and small giant clams set in the coral, with humphead wrasse, turtles and tuna reported, and whitetip and grey reef sharks logged occasionally.

• Second of six numbered reefs; dived together with number three as one half-day trip
• Hard coral gardens from about 15 m up to 4 m below the surface
• Pinnacles, short canyons and small caverns between the reefs
• The Heaven One, a liveaboard that burned and sank in 2005, at 14 m
• Used as the shallow second dive after a deep morning at Elphinstone, under 10 km away

Conditions

Shallow reefs a short run offshore, usually calm, with low to medium current. Visibility is generally good, quoted between 25 and 40 m with an average around 30 by one guide and up to 30 m by others. Water runs about 22 degrees in January and around 30 in summer.

On current: Low to medium. One operator grades the current here as low to medium and another describes it as limited to none, which fits a shallow reef group close inshore rather than an exposed offshore pinnacle. Nothing found suggests this is a drift site, and the standard dive is an out-and-back from a moored speedboat.