Ras Za`atar

The dive

Ras Za'atar is the rocky headland at the corner of Marsa Bareika, inside Ras Mohammed National Park, between Ras Ghozlani and Jackfish Alley. Some catalogues carry it twice, once under this spelling and once as 'Ras Za'atar - Ras Mohammed'; it is one headland. The name is Arabic for head of thyme. It is a boat dive and it is normally run as a drift, starting on the wall and finishing over the plateau at the corner.

The wall is the reason to come. It falls away steeply from the reef plate — a Sharm operator gives about 45 m for the wall itself, while dive centres cap the dive at 30 m — and it is cut through with open caverns and overhangs where daylight comes down through the reef table above. The published descriptions all converge on the same thing: light. Beams drop through the roof openings and into the caverns, and roughly half an hour into the dive there is a vertical chimney cut into the reef where sunbeams come down and reflect off the walls. This is why the site is dived in the afternoon, when the light is at its best. The wall itself is worth diving shallow: one centre puts the most interesting band at 15 to 18 m, where the rock is broken by cracks and small overhangs, and there is a table coral at about 22 m with glassfish packed around it, and pinnacles carrying purple, pink and green soft coral.

At the corner the wall opens into a plateau, and this is where the current picks up. That is also where the bigger animals show: cruising sharks are reported over the plateau, along with large trevally, fusiliers, eagle rays, and occasional mantas and turtles. On the wall and in the caverns the interest is smaller — potato grouper under the overhangs, longnose hawkfish, lionfish, octopus, nudibranchs, pipefish, boxer and cleaner shrimps, and juvenile fish shoaling on the plateau at the corner. One Sharm centre notes congregations of parrotfish here in early summer. OBIS records around the pin are consistent and add some scale to it: humphead wrasse, great barracuda, coral hind, coronation trout, giant moray, Guenther's sweeper, orangespotted trevally, yellowspotted kingfish, snubnose pompano, leopard torpedo, blue-spotted ribbontail ray, zebra angelfish, and — rarely — whale shark and pantropical spotted dolphin.

Practical constraints: this is inside a national park, so the dive comes with a per-diver entrance fee collected by the dive centre, a certification check, and the standard no-touching, no-taking, no-anchoring rules. At least one Sharm operator runs the site to a hard 30 m ceiling and a 60-minute or 60-bar turn. Current is usually workable but can pick up sharply on the corner, so it is graded intermediate rather than beginner and you want an SMB on you.

• Vertical chimney cut into the reef plate, roughly half an hour into the dive, with sunbeams coming down it
• Open caverns and overhangs on the wall lit from above through the reef table
• Table coral at about 22 m surrounded by glassfish
• Pinnacles carrying purple, pink and green soft coral
• The plateau at the corner, where current picks up and cruising sharks, trevally and eagle rays turn up

Conditions

A steep wall broken by daylit caverns, dived as a drift from a boat and finishing over a plateau at the headland corner. Depths are capped at 30 m by operators although the wall itself goes deeper. Current is usually workable on the wall and stronger at the corner. Sharm water runs about 22.7 degrees in March at its coldest and about 29.5 degrees in August on ten-year monthly averages.

On current: Normally dived as a drift along the wall. Reports are consistent rather than contradictory: current along the wall is usually manageable, and it accelerates where the wall turns into the plateau at the corner of the headland — which is exactly where the bigger fish and the cruising sharks are. One Sharm centre describes occasional strong currents and runs the site with a hard 30 m depth cap and a 60-minute or 60-bar turnaround. Take the corner as the part that can change on you.