Ras Burg

The dive

Ras Burg is Arabic for Tower Cape, and the tower is the point: the dive starts at a fossilised coral pinnacle that stands out of the water and gives the site its name. It sits on the eastern coast of the Ras Mohammed peninsula, in the run of sites that begins with Ras Ghozlani and Ras Za'atar at the two tips of Marsa Bareika and continues south through Jackfish Alley, Eel Garden and Shark Observatory. Our pin puts it 850 m from Ras Za'atar and 1.3 km from Jackfish Alley, which is exactly where Red Sea Marine's ordering of the coast places it. Like its neighbours it is dived as a drift, and it was added to the park's site list relatively recently: Red Sea Marine, writing about ten years after it was introduced, still calls the reason for that a puzzle.

There is one feature everybody who describes this site describes. A chimney, comparable to the ones at Ras Za'atar, packed with gorgonians, sponges and soft corals. The entry into it is narrow, and the same operator sets a hard practical limit on that: no more than four divers at a time. That is the whole argument for coming here, and it is a good one for a small group with a guide who knows the entry.

What follows is where the site gets an unusually honest write-up. After the chimney the dive carries on along the reef wall, and Red Sea Marine's verdict on that wall is that it is okay, but just okay, and that why anyone would pick it over its neighbour's wall at Ras Za'atar, or Shark Observatory further south, is frankly a mystery. We have not found an operator who argues otherwise, and we have not found one that publishes a depth range for Ras Burg on its own. Take that as the shape of the dive: a good, specific feature attached to an average wall, in a park where the average wall is already high.

On the relationship with Ras Za'atar, our sources do not support the common shorthand that the two are one drift. Both are drift dives on the same stretch of coast with no moorings, and Ras Burg's chimney is explicitly described as reminiscent of Za'atar's, but every description we read treats them as two dives with separate entry points, Za'atar starting at a large crevice visible on the shoreline and Ras Burg at the tower. If your boat sells you both, ask which one you are actually being dropped on. OBIS records 60 taxa within 1.5 km of this pin, headed by masked puffer, fire coral, sea goldies, humpnose big-eye bream, twoband anemonefish and blue-spotted ribbontail rays, with leopard torpedo rays recorded more often here than at most Sinai pins and occasional records of humphead wrasse and great barracuda.

• The fossilised coral pinnacle above water that names the site and marks the entry
• A chimney filled with gorgonians, sponges and soft corals, comparable to those at Ras Za'atar
• Small-group diving by necessity: four divers maximum through the chimney entry
• Leopard torpedo rays, recorded more often at this pin than at most Sinai sites

Conditions

A day-boat drift along the eastern coast of the Ras Mohammed peninsula, dropping at the tower and finishing wherever the water takes you, since there is no mooring. Beyond that we will not characterise a normal day here: no operator we read publishes depth, current or visibility figures for Ras Burg on its own, and the neighbouring sites' numbers are not this site's numbers.

On current: No operator we read publishes a current rating, a depth range or a visibility figure for Ras Burg specifically, only for its neighbours, so we have left those fields empty rather than borrow Ras Za'atar's. What is documented is structural: this is a drift with no mooring, like the rest of the sites on this coast, and Red Sea Marine attribute the whole Ras Mohammed peninsula's coral growth and fish life to the strong currents its geographic position puts across it. For scale on the chimney, the same source says the chimneys at neighbouring Ras Za'atar are best explored at 10 to 15 m; that is a fact about Za'atar, not a measurement of this site.

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