Mashraba

The dive

Mashraba is the southern end of the fringing reef that runs along Dahab bay, off the Mashraba quarter and roughly 150 m south of the Lighthouse entry. It is the house reef of several town dive centres, so it is dived as a walk-in from the promenade or through a camp's beach rather than from a boat. You cross a shallow rocky reef flat, about 50 cm deep at high tide, then a sand and seagrass shelf that runs out and down to roughly 12 m before the reef proper begins.

The structure divers work is a sandy slope broken by coral heads. Roman's Rock, the pinnacle most briefings are built around, has its base near 30 m and its top at about 18 to 20 m; south of it there are table corals at around 20 m and a gorgonian on the slope. A swim-through between two pinnacles sits at roughly 36 to 38 m and is used for deep and technical training rather than recreational sightseeing; Sea Dancer asks for a Deep Diver rating before running it. In the shallows there is a small group of submerged statues that the local centres use for skills practice and photography.

The seagrass and rubble either side of the entry is what most repeat divers come for: this is a macro dive as much as a reef dive. The centres that dive it daily report seahorses, ghost pipefish, frogfish, snake eels, octopus, cuttlefish and stonefish on the seagrass and around the statues, and OBIS occurrence records for this pin include Spanish dancer and the pyjama nudibranch Chromodoris quadricolor. Out on the slope, sea goldies and glassfish stack over the pinnacle, and grey moray, masked puffer, twoband anemonefish and several butterflyfishes are routine. Napoleon wrasse, groupers, rays and green and hawksbill turtles are reported here but not on every dive; dawn is the slot the local centres name for turtles.

One local quirk worth knowing: a wadi behind the beach floods occasionally after rain and pushes sediment out over the inshore coral. Sea Dancer describes both that damage and the recovery that follows it, and it is the usual reason for a bad visibility day on an otherwise clear stretch of coast.

• Roman's Rock, a pinnacle with its base near 30 m and its top around 18-20 m
• Seagrass and sand flats dived as macro: seahorses, ghost pipefish, frogfish, snake eels, octopus
• Submerged statues in the shallows, used for skills and photography
• Table corals at about 20 m and a gorgonian on the slope
• A 36-38 m swim-through between pinnacles for deep and technical training
• Walk-in entry straight off the Dahab promenade, no boat needed

Conditions

A normal day is flat inshore water, 20 m or better visibility, and very little current over the seagrass. Water runs roughly 23-25 C in winter and 27-29 C in summer. The tide is the variable that matters: at high water the reef flat is crossable, at low water the entry gets shallow and rough on gear. Visibility drops sharply for a day or two after rain, when the wadi behind the beach flushes sediment out over the inshore reef.

On current: Sources disagree on how much water moves here. Scuba Seekers, which uses Mashraba as its training house reef, describes calm water with little current, and Divezone calls Dahab's currents generally gentle; H2O Divers' own site table rates the current at this site two out of three. Taking the more cautious of the two, plan for light to moderate flow along the outer slope and near the pinnacles, and effectively still water over the seagrass and the statues inshore. The bigger practical issue is not current but the reef flat you cross on the way in and out at low tide.

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

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