Temple

The dive

Temple sits in a large bay backed by fossilised coral cliffs on the Sharm el Sheikh local coast, just off Ras Umm Sid and about fifteen minutes by boat from Travco Marina. The site is a sandy plateau sloping from roughly 10 m to 20 m with three large coral pinnacles standing in the middle of it, one of them rising to within about 5 m of the surface. The columns are what gave the site its name. Beyond the plateau the ground drops away, and more pinnacles carrying sea fans and glassfish stand along the drop-off.

The dive is run from one of several shallow moorings, usually starting at the front of the pinnacles and working around them along sandy paths. The largest tower has two cracks in it: one is wide enough to swim through and the other is left alone to protect the coral growing in it, and Circle Divers attributes the split down the middle of the main pinnacle to the 1995 earthquake. A second pinnacle tops out at 12 m and bottoms at 18 m, and there is a swim-through entered at about 18 m that exits at 14 m. An amphora carried over from the nearby Amphoras wreck sits on the site.

The pinnacle walls are steep and dense with soft corals, hard corals and fan corals, and Blue Sea Dive Club rates the coral growth here as better than the immediate area around it. Glassfish and glass sweepers school around the towers, rays rest on the sand along the drop-off, and lionfish and well-camouflaged stonefish are both reported here. Temple is one of Sharm's standard night dives, when basket stars open into feeding curtains under a torch, but it is also heavily used: Red Sea Marine describes the concentration of torches, strobes and boat lights turning the bay into a light show at peak hours.

• Three coral towers on a sandy plateau, the tallest reaching to about 5 m below the surface
• Swimmable crack through the main pinnacle, attributed to the 1995 earthquake
• Swim-through entered around 18 m that exits at 14 m
• Basket stars opening under torchlight on the night dive
• Glassfish and glass sweepers schooling around the towers, rays on the sand along the drop-off
• An amphora carried over from the nearby Amphoras wreck

Conditions

A sheltered bay, calm water and mild current, on a shallow mooring about fifteen minutes out of Travco Marina. The plateau runs 10 to 20 m with the pinnacles standing on it, so most of the dive is spent in the 12-18 m band. It is used enough that you will rarely have it alone, and after dark it is one of the busiest sites on the Sharm coast.

On current: Every source that mentions current calls it mild. Circle Divers notes that what current there is tends to run on the left-hand side of the main pinnacle, and Sadko describes calm water with minimal current. Red Sea Marine adds that the bay is generally sheltered from wind and waves, which is why operators keep Temple as a third dive or a late-afternoon dive when the outer sites are blown out. On depth the sources split: Red Sea Marine and the pinnacle geometry put the working dive at 10-20 m, Circle Divers describes the bay as 10-18 m, while Sadko quotes a 5-30 m range for the site. The shallower 20 m figure is recorded here as the conservative one.

Dives & underwater footage