Soug Bohar

The dive

Soug Bohar is the reef in front of the Lazuli Hotel about 15 km south of El Quseir, which is why it is logged just as often as Kilo 15 South after the road marker. PADI gives the address of the resident Atlantik Diving Center as "Lazuli Hotel Marsa Alam, 15km South of El-Quseir", and the Soug Bohar Nord entry that centre contributed sits 160 m from this pin; a wannadive waypoint for the same reef falls within about 50 m of it. Entry is not a walk down a beach slope. You get in through a hole roughly 4 m across and 2 to 3 m deep in the reef flat and follow a fixed rope out through a short canyon to open water, and you come back the same way.

Outside, the reef is a maze of smaller reefs, pinnacles, channels and cavelets. Most divers turn south, where the reef breaks up into a run of large boulders and then a generally sloping reef with walls on both sides. Depth along the reef wall is around 12 to 14 m and the ground outside it runs past 25 m. About twenty minutes out there is a free-standing pinnacle with its top around 11 m and its base around 37 m, ringed by snappers and bigeye emperors. The dive centre's own account adds a sandy plateau where an eagle ray tends to sit, deeper pinnacles at 30 m packed with glassfish, and a table anemone holding harlequin shrimp.

OBIS records near this pin have a shore-zone signature that fits a reef you enter off the flat: sohal surgeonfish, broomtail wrasse, bluespotted ribbontail ray, common lionfish, giant, grey and snowflake morays, day octopus, banded and tiger snake eels, and a single record of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin. The dive centre also reports scorpionfish and bluespotted rays on the reef itself. Two claims here are old and flagged as such: the guide entry that describes the layout also says the deeper areas are a chance at guitarfish, and calls hard-coral cover excellent, but that entry dates from between 2007 and 2014 and nothing published since repeats either claim.

• Rope-assisted entry through a hole in the reef flat, out through a short canyon
• A maze of pinnacles, channels and small caves once you are outside
• Free-standing pinnacle roughly twenty minutes south, top at 11 m and base near 37 m
• Snappers and bigeye emperors holding around that pinnacle
• A table anemone with harlequin shrimp, and glassfish on the deeper pinnacles
• The boulder field where the reef breaks up to the south

Conditions

A shore dive that is on or off depending on the surface, because the rope through the hole is the only way in and out. Both sources that publish a visibility figure give the same range, 10 to 30 m. Along the reef wall you are in 12 to 14 m; the ground outside it runs past 25 m, and the free-standing pinnacle drops to roughly 37 m.

On current: The two things sources disagree on are current and depth, so both are recorded conservatively. On current, the only first-hand account gives 1 to 2 knots and calls this a good-weather-only site, because entry and exit both depend on the rope through the hole in the reef flat; no other source publishes a figure at all. On depth, the guide entry caps the site at 25 m, the dive centre's own entry at 30 m, and the first-hand account puts the base of the offshore pinnacle at 37 m. 30 m is recorded here as the working maximum; the pinnacle base is a deliberate deep dive, not part of the normal profile.