Abu Nawas Garden

The dive

Abu Nawas Garden is the coral garden on the fringing reef in front of the Abo Nawas resort, on the coast about 20 km north of Marsa Alam town. The resort sits behind a shallow turquoise lagoon with a private jetty running out across it to the reef, which is how its guests reach the site; divers-guide.com record the access as shore, boat, or a paid zodiac from that jetty. The reef in front of it is what the name refers to: divers-guide describe large fields of hard and soft coral with overgrown pillars through them, and SeaHorse Diving Club call it a rich coral garden with dome-shaped coral heads and a wide variety of fish.

The dive is shallow, and that is its character rather than a limitation. SeaHorse give the working range as 5 to 22 m and note that much of the reef tops out around 8 m, so the dive is spent in the light rather than on a wall. They run it as a drift by speedboat from Marsa Gabal el Rosas, about 3 km south of this pin, rate it easy for all certified divers and put the current at low to medium; divers-guide give a maximum of 20 m, visibility of 20 to 30 m averaging 25 m, and call the current limited. Neither source describes a drop-off, a canyon or an overhead here.

Worth being clear about what this is not. Marsa Shagra house reef is 810 m away and is a separate, far better-documented dive, and Red Sea Diving Safari, who run Marsa Shagra, do not list Abu Nawas among their sites at all - this is the neighbouring resort's reef, not part of theirs. Habiba Wall and Queen Wall are 1.8 km north and are also separate entries. What this pin has going for it is the biology: OBIS holds 60 taxa within 1.5 km, and unusually for this catalogue several of them are well sampled - bluespotted ribbontail ray on 43 occurrences, lionfish on 22, coral hind and peacock cod on 20 each, sailfin tang, masked puffer, Picasso and titan triggerfish, giant moray, batfish, black-and-white snapper, Spanish dancer, tentacled flathead and leopard torpedo. Divers-guide add squid, snappers, turtles and scorpionfish as permanent residents.

• Large fields of hard and soft coral with overgrown pillars and dome-shaped coral heads
• Shallow throughout, much of it around 8 m, so the reef is dived in full light
• Reached either from the resort's jetty across a shallow lagoon or as a speedboat drift from the south
• One of the better-sampled pins in this stretch: 60 OBIS taxa including bluespotted ribbontail ray on 43 records

Conditions

Shallow, bright and generally calm. Visibility is recorded by divers-guide.com between 20 and 30 m, averaging 25 m. Between the reef and the shore sits a quiet, shallow lagoon, which is the water you cross on the jetty to reach the dive. SeaHorse Diving Club rate the current low to medium and the dive easy. None of the sources read gives water temperatures or a wind constraint for this pin.

On current: The two sources disagree mildly and the conservative reading wins. SeaHorse Diving Club, who run this as a drift dive, rate the current low to medium; divers-guide.com record it as limited. Plan for the higher of the two, particularly if you are diving it as the speedboat drift rather than out and back from the jetty. Neither source gives a direction or a seasonal pattern.