Shark & Yolanda Reef

The dive

Shark and Yolanda Reef is at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula inside Ras Mohammed National Park, roughly 16 km south-west of Sharm El Sheikh and about an hour by boat. Our catalogue holds it twice: this record, and a second one published as 'Yolanda house reef' 250 m away, whose coordinates are the ones PADI publishes for Yolanda Reef and whose PADI text is the standard Shark and Yolanda description. They are the same place. There is no resort house reef at that position. The facts on the two pages are deliberately identical.

The site is two reefs dived as one. Shark Reef is a vertical wall dropping into deep water; a saddle connects it to Yolanda Reef, where a short wall from the surface opens onto a plateau at roughly 12 to 20 m scattered with pinnacles and soft coral. The standard plan is to start at Shark Reef and drift south onto Yolanda. Current is described as moderate to strong and the dive is planned around it rather than against it.

The name comes from the freighter Yolanda, which struck the reef in the 1980s. A storm pushed the hull over the edge and it now sits at about 180 m, far outside any recreational limit, but part of the cargo stayed in the shallows: the bathroom fittings - toilets, bathtubs, sinks - that give the site its nickname, at around 15 to 18 m and now grown over with coral. Camel Dive Club calls Yolanda the richest coral garden in Ras Mohammed.

Unlike the duplicate record, this position does carry occurrence data, and it is the strongest of the nine Sinai sites in this batch: bluespotted ribbontail ray and giant moray lead by a distance, followed by scalefin anthias, twoband anemonefish, bluespine unicornfish, forsteri hawkfish, humphead (Napoleon) wrasse, rusty parrotfish, yellowmargin triggerfish, crocodile flathead, coral hind, yellowbar angelfish, blackback butterflyfish, orbicular batfish and Desjardin's sailfin tang. Ras Mohammed is a declared national park: diving in designated areas only, out by sunset, and a marine-park fee collected by your dive centre.

• Drift from Shark Reef across the saddle onto the Yolanda plateau
• Cargo of bathroom fittings from the wreck at roughly 15-18 m, now coral-covered
• Plateau at 12-20 m with pinnacles and soft coral; the walls beside it fall away far deeper
• Inside Ras Mohammed National Park: park rules and a per-trip fee apply
• The same site as our 'Yolanda house reef' record 250 m away

Conditions

A drift, normally north to south from Shark Reef onto the Yolanda plateau, in moderate to strong current. Area visibility is quoted at 10-40 m and water temperature 20-28 C through the year. The plateau sits at 12-20 m; the walls beside it fall away far deeper.

On current: Dive The World rates the current moderate to strong and says the site is best dived as a drift from Shark Reef to Yolanda. Visibility across the Ras Mohammed area is quoted as a 10-40 m range; we record the conservative lower bound. Water temperature for the area is given as 20-28 C seasonally. PADI lists a 40 m maximum for this site while the Yolanda plateau itself is described at 12-20 m; we record 12-40 m, and a recreational plan should stay on the plateau.

Dives & underwater footage