SeaLogEgypt · reef
A minibus shore dive on the Safaga to El Quseir road: a channel cut through the reef top, a cave beside it, and coral blocks on the sand outside.
Salim is one of the shore sites on the Extra Divers El Quseir programme, a run of fringing-reef entries strung along the coast road between El Quseir and south Safaga. The ED on the end of the name in this catalogue is not part of the name; it is the operator tag carried over by the SSI MyDiveGuide import, and the site is simply Salim. Extra Divers reach these sites by daily half-day and full-day minibus excursions, plus speedboat tours, covering around 30 dive sites across El Quseir, Marsa Alam and south Safaga.
The most concrete thing that exists for this site is the dive centre's own briefing-board map, photographed at the base in July 2009 and published in a diver's collection of El Quseir site maps. It shows the entry marked at the head of a narrow channel cut down through the reef top, with a cave marked off to one side of it, and the channel opening out onto the reef edge, where coral blocks and small pinnacles stand on a sand slope running down and away from the reef. The operator's own listing describes the same thing in words: a shore dive by minibus, entry through a hole in the reef top, and a jagged reef with coral garden on both sides.
Beyond those, there is very little. No trip report, guidebook or second operator I could find describes Salim, no source publishes a depth, a visibility figure or a current for it, and it does not appear on the Safaga dive-site lists. That is why the numbers on this page are almost all absent rather than estimated. Treat this as a confirmation that the site exists and roughly what shape it is, and get the depth profile from the briefing.
One catalogue note. SeaLog also carries a separate pin called Selim about 4 km up the coast, which has no sourceable description at all. There is only one Salim on the Extra Divers site list, so the two rows are almost certainly the same name imported twice; this row is the one with operator provenance behind it.
Shore dive reached by minibus from the dive centre, not by boat. Extra Divers El Quseir, based at the Movenpick resort, runs daily half-day and full-day minibus excursions and speedboat tours to around 30 sites across El Quseir, Marsa Alam and south Safaga, and Regaldive describes shore diving as the norm on this coast with sites reached by jeep, truck or zodiac. The entry itself is through a hole cut down through the reef top.
Access to the site runs through a local operator.
No months claimed. Nothing I read gives a season for this site or for the Extra Divers shore sites on this stretch of coast, and a reef-top channel entry is a sea-state question on the day rather than a calendar one.
Effectively undocumented. Wikivoyage gives around 20 m visibility on a calm day for the El Quseir coast generally, which is the only conditions figure available and is an area figure rather than a measurement here. No source publishes temperature, current or surge for Salim.
On current: No source gives a current figure for Salim. The one structural thing worth knowing is that the way in and the way out is a channel cut through the reef top, which on this coast is where surge and tide are felt rather than out on the open reef. Ask the guide about the state of the channel before you get in.
It is an operator tag, not part of the place name. The SSI MyDiveGuide import that produced this record carried the dive centre's own labelling through, and ED marks the Extra Divers site list at El Quseir. Search for Salim rather than Salim ED, and expect briefing boards and boat sheets to say only Salim.
No source publishes a depth for this site, which is why the field here is empty rather than filled with an estimate. The dive centre's briefing map shows coral blocks on a sand slope outside the reef with no depths written on it. Get the profile at the briefing before you enter.
Through a channel cut down through the reef top. Both the dive centre's own briefing map and its site listing describe the entry as a hole in the reef roof leading out to the seaward side, and the map marks a cave beside that channel. You come back the same way at the end of the dive.
No, it is a shore dive reached by road. Extra Divers El Quseir runs daily half-day and full-day minibus excursions along this coast, and the site listing specifically calls it a shore dive with the minibus. Regaldive likewise describes shore diving as the normal format for the El Quseir sites, reached by jeep or truck.
Very probably yes. SeaLog carries a separate Selim pin about 4 km up the coast for which no operator, guide or trip report description exists at all, while the Extra Divers site list contains exactly one Salim. The two rows look like the same name imported twice, and this is the one with operator provenance behind it.
Very little, and the page reflects that. Beyond the dive centre's briefing-board map and its own one-line site listing, no trip report, guidebook or second operator describes it, and it does not appear on the Safaga dive-site lists. Confidence on this record is deliberately low and most of the numeric fields are left empty.
| Species | How often | Records |
|---|---|---|
| Ocypode saratan | rare | 2 |
| Acanthopleura vaillantii | rare | 1 |
| Tellinella crucigera | rare | 1 |
| Euanodontia ovum | rare | 1 |
| Longchaeus maculosus | rare | 1 |
| Chama limbula | rare | 1 |
| Ctena divergens | rare | 1 |
| Ophiocoma scolopendrina | rare | 1 |
| Pinna muricata | rare | 1 |
| Pleurobranchus peronii | rare | 1 |
| Thranita crenata | rare | 1 |
| Arothron hispidus | rare | 1 |
| Cerithium caeruleum | rare | 1 |
| Lydia tenax | rare | 1 |
A hotel house reef south of Safaga you enter through a hole in the reef top - no current, no boat traffic, any weather.
Half an hour south of Gassous Bay in the base bus, in through a small cave under overhangs, out onto blocks that stand from deep water almost to the surface.
The northern run of one resort's private house reef at Kalawy Bay, entered off a 250 m jetty and dived in whichever direction the current picks.
A shore dive that starts inside a sandy canyon and opens onto a maze of old coral heads, run only when the sea allows it.
A shore dive on the El Quseir coast built around tunnels - one of them about 80 m long, ending through a hole at 7 m.
The southern half of a resort fringing reef 30 km below Safaga, entered off a 250 m jetty onto a sand platform at 5 m.
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