Jackfish Alley

The dive

Jackfish Alley runs along the northern side of the Ras Mohammed peninsula, between Ras Za'atar and the Shark Observatory headland, inside the national park. The name comes from the sandy lane between the reef wall and the coral slope where trevally school. The dive is normally run as a one-way drift: the boat drops you on the wall, you work along it with the tide, and you finish over the coral garden and the satellite reef.

The wall itself is porous and full of small crevices, and it holds two shallow caves with separate entrances and exits. The first sits at around 6 m and cuts roughly 40 m into the reef; the second climbs upward and fills with glassfish lit by daylight coming through cracks in the roof. Circle Divers describe the same features as a dog-leg swim-through at 5 m, a sandy bay at 9 m, a second swim-through entered at 15 m that rises back to 5 m, and a pinnacle at 12 to 14 m. Where the wall meets the bottom it flattens into sand, and that plateau is where blue-spotted ribbontail rays, feathertail rays and eagle rays are seen. The coral garden works between 10 and 18 m and ends at a satellite reef standing about 50 m off the main wall, whose drop-off catches the most current and the most passing fish.

This is a current site. The channel funnels tidal flow, and operators rate it from intermediate to advanced depending on the day; Red Sea Atlas puts the flow at 1 to 1.5 knots and treats a DSMB on ascent as mandatory because of surface boat traffic in the park. On slack water it reduces to an easy reef swim. The caves are short and daylit rather than true cave diving, but they are still overhead, and operators take small groups through them with a torch rather than letting divers wander.

It is a boat dive only, 45 to 60 minutes out of Sharm el-Sheikh, usually paired with Shark Reef or Ras Za'atar on a two-dive day trip, and also a standard stop for liveaboards leaving Sharm. Note that our catalogue carries a second pin for the same site under the name Jackfish Alley - Ras Mohammed, about 900 m away.

• Two shallow daylit caves, one about 6 m deep cutting roughly 40 m into the reef
• Glassfish packed into the second cave under light shafts from the roof
• Sandy plateau at the foot of the wall with blue-spotted ribbontail, feathertail and eagle rays
• Coral garden between 10 and 18 m ending at a satellite reef 50 m off the wall
• Schooling trevally over the sand lane the site is named for

Conditions

Circle Divers, based in Sharm, put year-round visibility across their sites at 15 to 40 m plus, so 25 m is a fair mid-range expectation rather than a measurement at this pin. Water runs about 20 to 25 C from January to March, 25 to 27 C in November and December, and Emperor Divers report up to 30 C at the height of summer; a 5 mm suit is the winter standard. The dive is run from a day boat with a live drop and a DSMB pickup.

On current: Tidal, and the reason the site works. Red Sea Atlas rates it moderate to strong at 1 to 1.5 knots and calls a DSMB ascent mandatory; Circle Divers rate the whole site intermediate and run it as a drift. We have taken the more cautious reading and marked it advanced, because the flow is strongest exactly where you want to be, at the drop-off of the satellite reef about 50 m off the main wall. On slack it is a benign reef dive; on a running tide it is a one-way ride with no swimming back.

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

Dives & underwater footage