Abu Talha

The dive

Abu Talha, also spelled Abu Telha, is a shore dive on the coast north of Dahab, reached by road or jeep in around fifteen to twenty minutes. Entry is over a reef table onto a sandy bottom - slippery, and full of holes of varying depth, so operators tell divers to put fins on before the edge of the table and not to descend until they are over the shallow saddle unless their buoyancy is genuinely reliable in shallow water.

Once out over the drop, the reef opens into a coral formation shaped like an amphitheatre, with a gradual slope down to about 30 m. The usual plan loops south and comes back along the reef wall at 10-15 m, through hard and soft coral, to the exit. Like its neighbour Abu Helal, it needs calm wind and high tide, so it is dived far less than the sites closer to town - which is most of its appeal.

It is a gentle dive and the page should say that plainly: no overhead route on the recreational plan, no notable current reported, nothing in common with the Blue Hole a few kilometres north beyond the coastline. Dive centres report turtles and small schools of yellowtail barracuda on the wall, and the site is known for large schools of redtoothed triggerfish. Our occurrence records here match the neighbouring reefs: twoband anemonefish, slate pencil urchins, scalefin anthias, sergeant majors, speckled sandperch, masked pufferfish, Red Sea bannerfish, purple tang, giant clams, broomtail wrasse and bluespotted ribbontail rays. There is a deeper canyon in this stretch of coast that operators restrict to technically trained divers.

• Shore entry over a reef table onto sand, north of Dahab
• Amphitheatre-shaped coral formation with a gradual slope to about 30 m
• Return along the reef wall at 10-15 m through hard and soft coral
• Large schools of redtoothed triggerfish; turtles and yellowtail barracuda reported

Conditions

Calm, shallow and quiet - or cancelled. Cross the reef table at high tide, drop over the saddle, slope out to around 30 m in the amphitheatre and come back along the wall at 10-15 m. No significant current is reported on the recreational route.

On current: Dive centres describe a gradual slope down to about 30 m and a return along the wall at 10-15 m, with no significant current reported on the recreational route. The limiting condition is the surface: the site is only diveable in calm wind at high tide because entry crosses a reef table. We found no visibility figure published for Abu Talha specifically - the 30-40 m figure in circulation is quoted for the Abu Helal / Abu Telha pair as a whole - so we leave it blank rather than borrow it.

Dives & underwater footage