Shark’s Bay

The dive

Shark's Bay is one of the string of local dive sites on the coast north of Naama Bay, between White Knight and Ras Bob to the north and the Gardens to the south. Operators run it as a shore dive from the bay itself and, from the Naama centres, as a short boat hop. It is a fringing reef with a shallow coral plateau starting at about 5 m and dropping off at around 20 m, dived with the reef on the left shoulder, and a sandy plateau at about 14 m with coral heads standing on it. The whole stretch of coast here sits sheltered from waves and strong currents, and it shows: one Sharm centre points out that you can spend 90 minutes on this site without ever dropping below 8 m. That, plus the shore entry, is why it is used so heavily as a training site.

Despite the name, sharks are not what you come for. The site is predominantly hard coral and the fish list is a macro list: a very healthy population of stonefish and of devil, bearded and small-scale scorpionfish, plus butterflyfish, angelfish, gobies, blennies, anthias and at least two pink anemones. Octopus and cuttlefish are regular, Spanish dancers turn up at night, and seamoths and ornate ghost pipefish are reported here as unusual finds. Napoleon wrasse and grouper are common, and eagle rays, fantail and honeycomb rays, leopard sharks, mantas and whale sharks have all been logged over the years without being anything like a reliable sighting.

The feature worth planning a dive around is a glassfish pinnacle at 28 m, which one centre notes is missing from the usual site map. It holds a large pygmy sweeper colony with several red-mouthed groupers guarding it, numerous shrimps and a busy cleaning station on the pinnacle itself, resident scorpionfish at its base, and a large malabar grouper that queues at the cleaning station and will let a diver hang next to it while it is being worked on. Further in, on the 14 m sand, is a coral head that often has two big morays in it and, beside it, a bubble anemone whose anemonefish are described by the same source as the two fiercest in the northern Red Sea — they bite, and they mean it.

One thing to be aware of: the deep canyon on the right-hand side of the bay drops away past 100 m and is used for technical diving. It is directly next to a site that also runs Open Water courses, so know which side of the bay your dive plan lives on.

• Shore entry onto a coral plateau from about 5 m, dropping off around 20 m
• Glassfish pinnacle at 28 m with a pygmy sweeper colony, red-mouthed groupers and an active cleaning station
• A large malabar grouper that tolerates divers while it is being cleaned
• Stonefish and three kinds of scorpionfish in unusual numbers
• One of the better night dives on the Sharm coast: crustaceans, echinoderms, cephalopods, Spanish dancers

Conditions

Sheltered, shallow and calm: a fringing reef and sandy plateau with little current, dived from shore or from a boat off Naama Bay. Most of a dive here happens between 5 and 20 m, and much of it can be done above 8 m. 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: Little current is the consistent report. The local sites either side of Naama Bay are described as sheltered from waves and strong currents by their position and by the shape of the fringing reef, and a Sharm centre specifically calls Shark's Bay a low-current site suited to long, shallow photography dives. Nothing published suggests it turns into a drift.