Marsa Assalaya

The dive

Marsa Assalaya, also written Marsa Asalaya and known locally as Kilo Saba'a, is one of the string of marsas on the coast road north of Marsa Alam town. Our pin sits about 10 km north of the town and 2.4 km from Marsa Egla, which matches the spacing two Marsa Alam operators give for the same two bays. Published distances vary: Blue Submarine says 11 km north, Deep South Divers gives 11 km in its own summary table but 7 km in its text, and the same page opens by placing the bay south of the town. The bay itself is not in doubt; the numbers around it are loose, and Deep South says so directly, warning that public coordinates for the site differ by a few hundred metres and that you should confirm the entry point with your centre.

The shape is the same in every account. A crescent bay with a wide, gently shelving sandy beach, a sandy floor that carries a seagrass bed through the middle, and fringing reef down each arm. You walk in from the sand, so there is no jetty, no boat schedule and no long surface swim. SeaHorse Diving Club describes the bottom as sloping gently rather than dropping away, and rates the site easy, all levels, and suitable for snorkelling as well as diving. Deep South Divers splits the two arms: the eastern reef for turtles and small rays, the western one for pinnacles, coral bommies and macro. It also notes the practical consequence of a bay this sheltered, that it stays divable when wind has shut the offshore sites.

The reason operators sell it is the seagrass. Every source we read names dugong and green turtles as the animals people come for, and Blue Submarine describes the bay as an increasingly reliable place to find dugong because of the size of the seagrass bed. That is a sighting, not a guarantee, and it is worth saying that our own occurrence records for this pin contain neither dugong nor turtle. What our records do hold is the ordinary shallow-bay list: lionfish, masked and stripebelly puffers, porcupinefish, blue-spotted ribbontail rays, royal angelfish, purple tang, Red Sea surgeonfish, banded pipefish, leopard flounder, giant clams and fire coral. Deep South adds ghost pipefish, seahorses, nudibranchs, octopus and cuttlefish.

Depth is the one figure we would not take from any single page. SeaHorse gives a 30 m maximum, Deep South gives a 2 to 18 m range, and Blue Submarine and Dive-Top both publish 50 m. Those are describing different things: the dive as it is normally run inside the bay, and the open slope beyond it. Treat this as a shallow bay dive and use your own gauge.

• Seagrass bed through the middle of the bay, grazed by green turtles and sometimes dugong
• Walk-in entry from a wide, gently shelving sandy beach, with no jetty and no surface swim
• Fringing reef down both arms of the crescent, with coral gardens and small caverns
• Eastern arm worked for turtles and small rays, western arm for pinnacles and macro
• Sheltered enough to dive when wind has closed the offshore sites

Conditions

Calm, shallow and sheltered, with a sandy walk-in entry and little or no current. Deep South Divers gives water between 22 C in January and 30 C in August and visibility of 10 to 20 m, which drops in the shallow seagrass and improves toward the reef arms. The bay is exposed enough to the sun and bare enough of shade that the site is described as a natural bay rather than a serviced beach.

On current: Current is the least of your problems here. SeaHorse Diving Club records it as none and Deep South Divers as mild to none, and both attribute that to how well the crescent shape protects the bay, which is also why it stays divable when wind has closed the offshore sites. Depth is where the sources come apart badly: Deep South publishes a 2 to 18 m range, SeaHorse a 30 m maximum, and Blue Submarine and Dive-Top both a 50 m maximum. The shallow figures describe the bay, the deep ones the slope outside it. We have recorded 2 to 30 m as the middle reading and would treat anything past 18 m as leaving the dive the operators actually run. Visibility is given as 10 to 20 m by Deep South and described elsewhere as limited in the shallow seagrass and better as you move out toward the reef arms; we have recorded 15 m.

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