Lahami Bay - Hausriff Nord

The dive

This is one of two pins our catalogue carries for a single reef. Lahami Bay Hausriff South sits 390 m away and is the southern end of the same house reef; treat the pair as two entry points on one dive rather than as two sites. What lies in front of the Lahami Bay Beach Resort, at Wadi Lahami on the Hamata coast, is a wide sheltered bay with a coral ridge running through it. The resort's dive centre, Extra Divers, describes that ridge as banana shaped and over 1.5 km long, directly in front of its beach station. Our two pins are 390 m apart, far less than that, which is the clearest evidence that they mark positions on one reef rather than two dives.

The sections have names, but the names do not agree between sources and that is worth knowing before a briefing confuses you. Two German accounts split the house reef into Baby, Banana and Big; a third splits it into Butterfly or Platform reef, Banana or Barrier reef, and Lagoon or Fringing reef. Only two things are consistent across all of them. The main entry is North Beach, which is the end this pin is closest to, and from it Baby Reef lies to the right and Big Reef to the left with Banana straight ahead. And Banana is the southernmost section, which is the far end of the same ridge.

The diving is shallow and easy. Taucher.net's record for this house reef gives a maximum of 9 to 10 m with a comfortable entry on the sandy beach of the hotel bay; the Nautilus site descriptions give Butterfly a deepest point of about 10 to 12 m, 50 m from the entry and small enough to circle in one dive, and Banana 2 to 7 m; another account says Banana seldom reaches 15 m for divers. There is a seagrass meadow right at the entry point. A 2011 dive report from here describes two turtles and a large ray on the left side, a group of sweetlips and a small Napoleon wrasse on the right, and about 20 m of visibility that drops when there is swell. Humphead wrasse, blue-spotted ribbontail ray, giant moray, blackspotted rubberlip, porcupinefish and coral hind all appear in the records for this pin.

The reef state is the thing to check before you book around it. A 2024 comment on a snorkelling account of this bay reports heavy damage from a sandstorm about two years earlier, with practically no intact corals left on Baby Reef and widespread browning elsewhere. A diver review of the resort's base separately describes the Banana and Big sections as largely covered in fine sediment with most coral dead. HEPCA's report on the 2024 bleaching event puts the southern Wadi El Gemal sector at up to 50.1 percent of colonies bleached, the worst of any Egyptian sector, with preliminary 2025 recovery of 75 to 88 percent. None of that means there is nothing to look at; it means the fish are the reason to get in, not the coral.

• The northern end of a house reef the dive centre describes as a banana shaped ridge over 1.5 km long
• Walk in entry at North Beach, with a second entry about five minutes further north at wooden stilts in the water
• A seagrass meadow at the entry point, with turtles reported feeding on it
• Shallow enough that the small platform section can be circled in a single dive
• Whitetip and blacktip reef sharks reported on early morning dives

Conditions

A walk in from a sandy beach into a sheltered bay, over a seagrass meadow and out to coral blocks and reef sections in shallow water. Current is generally mild and can set parallel to the shore. Visibility is around 20 m in one dated report and drops when swell is running.

On current: Sources put the depth of this house reef between 2 and about 15 m but do not agree on the ceiling: taucher.net's record gives a maximum of 9 to 10 m, Nautilus gives Butterfly 10 to 12 m and Banana 2 to 7 m, and a snorkelling account says Banana seldom reaches 15 m. We record 2 to 15 m so nobody plans shallow and finds themselves deeper; a blog figure of 5 to 20 m for the Big Reef section we did not adopt. Current is described as generally mild, with the bay itself giving shelter from the flow that runs on the open coast, and it can set parallel to the shore. The 20 m visibility figure comes from a single dated dive report and the same report notes it drops in swell.

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