Gota Sataya

The dive

Gota Sataya is a free-standing coral tower — a gota — in the eastern Fury Shoals, about 6 km northwest of the big Sataya horseshoe and roughly 14 km off the Hamata coast. The reef is around 300 m across and the sand runs flat around it at about 20 m on every side, which is most of why it is graded for all levels: there is no wall to fall off, and the profile is set by the seabed rather than by the diver. Boats moor at the northeastern tip, where two solitary coral rocks rise off the sand almost to the surface with overhangs and niches at their bases.

The reason to dive it is the coral garden along the northern flank, which operators call the Fury Shoals garden: boulder and mountain corals with table, leather, flowerpot and staghorn colonies over them, and the reef flat itself sitting about 4 m below the surface. The fish are the ordinary reef assortment rather than anything pelagic — parrotfish, moray eels, groupers tucked into the overhangs, twoband anemonefish in the anemones, blue-spotted ribbontail rays and lionfish on the sand. Occurrence records at this pin add dogtooth tuna, striated fusilier, blackspot snapper and a single bottlenose dolphin. Spanish dancers are recorded here too, and the sheltered mooring is why this is one of the Fury Shoals reefs liveaboards use for a night dive.

Two things are worth checking with your guide. Operators do not agree on how many reefs this name covers: one liveaboard fleet lists Sataya Gota Kebir (about 140 by 80 m, 5 to 25 m, with a southern plateau at 5 to 11 m) and Sataya Gota Soraya (about 250 by 70 m, 20 to 25 m, with a cave system leading into a lagoon) as two separate stops, while the English-language operator pages describe one site, Small Gota Sataya. Our pin sits inside that cluster and we cannot say which of the two it is. The second point follows from it: the northwest corner of the Soraya reef is described as sloping away to about 40 m, so the 20 m sand around the rest of the reef is not the whole story.

• Coral garden along the whole northern flank: mountain and boulder corals with table, leather, flowerpot and staghorn colonies
• Two solitary coral rocks at the northeastern tip, from the 20 m sand to just under the surface, with overhangs and niches at the base
• Sand at about 20 m all the way round, so the profile is fixed by the seabed
• Sheltered enough to stay on the mooring overnight, which is why it gets used for night dives
• Reef flat at about 4 m for the shallow end of the dive and for snorkellers off the boat

Conditions

Warm, clear and usually calm in the lee of the reef. Visibility on this stretch is reported at 20 to 30 m, commonly toward the top of that, and 30 m or better in spring and autumn. Water runs about 21 to 23 C in winter and up to about 30 C at the end of summer. The reef is small and low, so a northerly blow puts chop on the exposed side and boats work the sheltered flank instead.

On current: Sources disagree and we have carried the more cautious reading. A Dutch dive guide records the current here as limited to none and grades the site easy. The operator descriptions say the current splits along the western and eastern sides of the reef and that the entry point has to be chosen for the direction you plan to swim, and a liveaboard fleet notes that the Sataya area regularly runs a northerly. Treat it as a site where there is usually some flow around the ends of the reef and very little in the lee of it, and take the briefing's word over ours. Depth is the same story: the seabed at about 20 m surrounds the reef on every side, but the same fleet gives 20 to 25 m on one of the two Sataya gotas and describes its northwest coral garden sloping to about 40 m, so the sand is not a floor everywhere.

Best months: Mar, Apr, May, Sep, Oct, Nov