Fiddle Garden

The dive

Fiddle Garden is the fourth name on the Gardens, the run of fringing reef north of Naama Bay in Sharm el Sheikh. Red Sea Marine places it in the sheltered corner of a large bay almost exactly halfway between Middle Garden and Far Garden, and says the name comes from that position. Circle Divers list the chain in the same order, closest to Naama first: Near Garden, Middle Garden, Fiddle Garden, then Far Garden. Not everyone uses the name. Camel Dive Club's Sharm dive map names only Near, Middle and Far, and Sharm Scuba Service lists Near, Fiddle and Far, calling Fiddle the middle site. It is worth asking the boat which reef you are being taken to, because the same word does not point at the same water on every operator's list. Our own pin sits about 600 m southeast of Near Garden, which does not match the halfway-between-Middle-and-Far position the operators describe; the reef is further north along the coast than the coordinate suggests.

The profile is a reef wall running down to 6 to 8 m, then a sandy sloping bottom that eases away to a drop-off at around 18 to 20 m, running parallel to the shoreline. What you work is the plateau between the two. Coral pinnacles stand on the sand close to the reef wall, and the dive is a run along them. Red Sea Marine names two as the main features: Pinnacle A, with varied corals and shoals of pygmy sweepers, juvenile fusiliers and hatchetfish, and Pinnacle B, covered in soft white corals with a heavy growth of fire coral. Circle Divers put glassfish pinnacles between 10 and 16 m and describe three pinnacles in a row at the turning point of the dive, the last of them swarmed with glassfish and baby barracuda, with lionfish hanging off to the side.

Directly behind Pinnacle B, at 8 m and overgrown with coral, lie the broken remains of amphorae. Red Sea Marine believes them Roman; Circle Divers say they come from a wreck of about 400 years ago. Nobody names a ship, and no source describes anything of a hull, so the fragments are the whole of it. They are the one thing at this site that is not reef.

The reason operators keep it on the list is shelter. Red Sea Marine describes the site as completely shielded from wind and current and a popular choice for dive courses, lunch breaks, and days when the sea or weather is poor. It is normally worked as a mooring dive, with the option of drifting toward Far Garden. Occurrence records around the pin are the ordinary Sinai fringing-reef cast: Red Sea surgeonfish, Indo-Pacific sergeant, masked puffer, diagonal and blacktail butterflyfish, Picasso triggerfish, purple tang, sling-jaw wrasse, blue-spotted ribbontail ray and humphead wrasse. Sharm Scuba Service lists leopard shark and whitetip reef shark as regulars here; that is one operator's claim and no other source we read repeats it.

• Two named coral pinnacles: A with pygmy sweepers, juvenile fusiliers and hatchetfish, B in soft white coral
• Broken amphorae at 8 m directly behind Pinnacle B, overgrown with coral
• Three pinnacles in a row at the turn of the dive, the last packed with glassfish and baby barracuda
• Glassfish pinnacles worked between 10 and 16 m
• A sheltered mooring that stays diveable when wind closes the exposed sites

Conditions

A sheltered corner of a large bay, dived off a mooring, with a shallow reef wall on one side and a sandy plateau running out to a drop-off. Red Sea Marine calls it completely shielded from winds and currents and uses it for courses and lunch stops. The local Sharm sites are reached from Naama Bay by a boat ride the same operator puts at anywhere from 10 to 70 minutes depending on which one you are going to.

On current: Red Sea Marine describes Fiddle Garden as completely shielded from winds and currents, which is why it is used for courses and for days when conditions elsewhere are poor. It is normally a mooring dive, and drifting toward Far Garden is the option rather than the default. No source we read describes water strong enough to run the dive. On depth the sources split: Circle Divers publish 0 to 30 m for the site, while the described topography puts the drop-off at 18 to 20 m and the ground continues below it. This page uses 20 m, because that is where the pinnacles and the dive are, not where the bottom stops.

Dives & underwater footage