Abu Dabab South

The dive

Abu Dabab South is the southern fringing reef of Marsa Abu Dabab, the shore-accessible seagrass bay 34 km north of Marsa Alam town between the Malikia and Hilton Marsa Alam Nubian resorts. Scuba World Divers describes the site as one bay made of three parts - a southern house reef, a northern house reef and the large seagrass meadow linking them - and this record names the southern of those two reefs. The south side is a coral garden with heavy hard- and soft-coral cover and schooling reef fish; the seagrass off it, at 2-4 m, is where the green turtles feed.

The whole bay is a gently sloping sand basin with low current, rated beginner-level, and dived and snorkelled from the beach. Published maximum depths disagree - 24 m in one operator's description, 40 m in another - and we record the conservative 24 m; the coral heads themselves top out 2-3 m below the surface and drop to about 10 m on this southern side. Water is reported around 29 C in summer.

Sightings are asymmetric and worth being honest about. Green turtles are routine: a 2012 study of the bay recorded them daily in peak season, with 300 sightings in November alone. Dugong is the rarest thing here, not the reliable one - the same study logged two sightings in September, two in October and one in November, and recorded about 25 people crowding a single animal on one of those days. That crowding is why the code of conduct exists and why Red Sea Protectorate rangers are stationed at the bay. Guitarfish, eagle rays and macro subjects including ghost pipefish and seahorses are also reported.

Our OBIS record for this position is the densest of any site in this batch - 60 taxa led by blue-spotted ribbontail ray at 146 occurrences, then sailfin tang, sohal surgeonfish, Klunzinger's wrasse, sergeant major, common lionfish, masked butterflyfish and daisy parrotfish - which is a textbook, heavily surveyed northern Red Sea reef community.

One more thing worth saying plainly, because our own catalogue makes it confusing. Marsa Abu Dabab appears in our data three times: as 'Marsa Abu Dabab' (SSI record 101697, whose own alias list includes 'Abu Dabbab bay' and 'coral garden'), as 'Abu Dabab Garden' (record 135209, aliased 'Dabbab house reef') and as 'Abu Dabab South' (record 387101). The three positions lie within about 400 m of each other, all inside the same marsa, and Scuba World Divers describes the site as one bay made of a southern house reef, a northern house reef and the seagrass meadow between them. These are not three dive sites. They are three catalogue entries for parts of one bay, and we have kept the facts identical across them rather than invent differences. Separately, none of them is one of the numbered offshore reefs Abu Dabbab I to VII, which dive centres reach by speedboat and where the dugong and turtles are not to be expected.

• Southern house reef of the Abu Dabab bay, entered from the beach
• Coral garden dropping to about 10 m on this side; blocks top out 2-3 m down
• Seagrass at 2-4 m alongside - green turtles daily in season, dugong rare
• The densest occurrence record of any site in this stretch of coast
• Same bay as our Marsa Abu Dabab and Abu Dabab Garden records

Conditions

A gently sloping sandy bay with low current, calm and shallow, dived and snorkelled from the beach. Coral blocks top out 2-3 m below the surface and drop to about 10 m on this southern side, with the seagrass meadow at 2-4 m across the middle of the bay. No source publishes a typical visibility figure. Water is around 29 C in summer. The bay is busy, and emptiest early.

On current: Operators agree the bay is gently sloping with low current and describe it as calm and shallow. Maximum depth is disputed: Scuba World Divers gives 24 m for the site, SeaHorse Diving Club quotes 40 m, and the coral garden inside the bay is described as topping out 2-3 m below the surface and dropping to 10 m on the south side and 15 m on the north. We record the conservative 24 m. No source publishes a typical visibility figure, so none is recorded. Water is reported around 29 C in summer.

Dives & underwater footage