Dolphin House

The dive

Dolphin House is the northern lagoon of Sha'ab El Erg, a horseshoe-shaped reef roughly 7 km long lying offshore between Hurghada and El Gouna. The arms of the horseshoe enclose a shallow sandy lagoon scattered with ergs, the isolated coral blocks the reef is named for. That enclosure is the whole point of the site: a small resident group of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) uses the lagoon as a daytime resting and nursing area, and the boats come for that rather than for the topography.

As a dive it is shallow and undemanding. Operators working the site put the lagoon floor around 8 to 12 m and dive it to about 18 m on the outer edges; one logged dive here in May 2026 recorded a maximum of 14.9 m over a 7.9 m average, 62 minutes, water at 24 degrees. You drop onto sand, work between coral blocks and the reef edge, and stay in natural light the whole dive. Hard and soft corals cover the blocks; the usual reef-fish assemblage is present, with blue-spotted stingrays on the sand, giant morays in the blocks, and eagle rays passing occasionally. Manta rays visit the wider Sha'ab El Erg reef, most often in February and March.

The dolphins are wild and nothing about them is scheduled. They are not guaranteed on a given dive, and how you behave around them is regulated rather than merely encouraged: HEPCA's dolphin code of conduct is enforced in the Red Sea Governorate and names Sha'ab El Erg specifically as a resting area. Boats hold 30 m and 4 knots, swimmers go in with mask, fins, snorkel and a lifejacket, nobody chases, touches or feeds, and scooters are out.

One caution on the name. Samadai Reef off Marsa Alam is also called Dolphin House, is a different reef several hundred kilometres south, holds spinner dolphins rather than bottlenose, and runs its own zoning and access system. Advice written for one does not apply to the other.

• Resident Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins using the lagoon as a daytime rest area
• Sheltered sandy lagoon 8-12 m deep, scattered with coral ergs
• Blue-spotted stingrays on the sand, giant moray in the coral blocks
• Manta rays on the wider reef, most often February and March
• Shallow enough that the whole dive stays in natural light

Conditions

Shallow, bright, sheltered water over sand and coral blocks. The one first-hand dive log we could read from this site, in May 2026, gives 24 degrees and visibility around 30 m; a dive-tourism guide claims over 40 m, which no primary source we found supports, so the figure recorded here is deliberately lower. An El Gouna operator gives 26-30 degrees for the May-September window.

On current: The lagoon is sheltered by the reef arms and operators describe the conditions there as calm; the exposed outer edges of the horseshoe are more open and can move. Sources disagree on how deep the site goes: an El Gouna operator gives 18 m as the working maximum, a booking listing gives 16 m, and a dive-guide article describing the outer walls and pinnacles of the wider reef says they reach 25 m. The 18 m figure is used here as the conservative reading for the lagoon dive itself.