Abu Dabab VI

The dive

Sha'ab Abu Dabbab is a spread-out complex of offshore reefs about 6 km east of Abu Dabbab Bay, numbered 1 to 7 and reached only by boat from Marsa Alam or Port Ghalib. This pin is the sixth of them and sits at the southern, outer end of the chain: Abu Dabab V is 0.8 km north, Abu Dabab IV 1.6 km north, and Om Halhalla, which one logbook entry notes is the site people actually mean when they say Abu Dabab 7, is 3.4 km to the south-west. It is not the dugong bay. Marsa Abu Dabbab, the seagrass bay the name is famous for, is on the coast several kilometres west of here, and nothing published puts dugongs on the numbered offshore reefs.

What a dive guide publishes about the complex is that the reefs split into two groups: 2 and 3, which carry the wreck of the liveaboard Heaven One and get most of the traffic, and 1 and 4 to 7, which it says people rarely dive. The eastern side of the reefs is worked as a drift where larger animals turn up; the western side is more sheltered, with shallow slopes, pinnacles and passages and limited current. The bottom is sand and coral. The only dated first-hand report that names this reef is a logged dive on "Abu Dabab 5/6" in February 2022: a cavern with good light and a lot of nudibranchs in it, and outside that cavern, in the diver's words, little growth. That dive recorded a 20 m maximum, 20 m of visibility and 21 degrees C.

OBIS records at this pin are ordinary northern Red Sea reef fauna: Red Sea clownfish and threespot dascyllus on the anemones, coral hind, Suez fusiliers, crocodilefish, giant moray, bluespotted ribbontail ray, zebra angelfish and false stonefish, with whitetip reef shark and humphead wrasse both present in small numbers. The nudibranchs that logged dive mentions are represented too, by the pyjama nudibranch and the Spanish dancer. Beyond that, very little is written about this reef specifically: one guide covering the whole complex, one operator selling it as a day trip, and one logbook line. Confidence on this page is low for that reason.

• The sixth of the numbered Sha'ab Abu Dabbab reefs, in the group a dive guide describes as rarely dived
• A cavern with good light and a lot of nudibranchs, per the one dated report from this reef
• The sheltered western side: shallow slopes, pinnacles and passages with limited current
• The eastern side worked as a drift for larger animals
• Whitetip reef shark and humphead wrasse both in the OBIS records at this pin

Conditions

An offshore reef with no shelter, worked from a day boat or a zodiac off it. For the complex as a whole the dive guide publishes 25 to 40 m of visibility, averaging 30 m, and water between 18 and 28 degrees C over the year; the February 2022 logged dive at 5/6 recorded 20 m of visibility and 21 degrees C. Current is described as limited on the sheltered western side and worth drifting on the eastern one.

On current: No source publishes a depth or current figure for this reef alone, so none is recorded here. The numbers that exist are for other things: the dive guide gives the whole Sha'ab Abu Dabbab complex "limited to none" current and a depth "to 60 m", PADI publishes 3 to 25 m for the neighbouring Abu Dabbab 5, and the operator that sells this site contradicts itself between its own pages, listing 25 to 30 m for Abu Dabbab V and 30 to 35 m for VI. The one logged dive at 5/6 recorded a 20 m maximum. The same operator describes VI as the more exposed of the pair, which fits its position at the outer, southern end of the chain, so plan for more current than the inshore reefs of the group carry, and treat it as a drift on the eastern side. Difficulty is recorded as intermediate rather than the guide's "all levels" for the same reason.