The Lighthouse

The dive

The Lighthouse is the shore entry at the sheltered northern end of Dahab bay, in Ghazala Bay, a few steps from the promenade and within walking distance of most of the town's dive and freediving centres. Diving Medicine School calls it the busiest dive site in Dahab, and that is not a boast about quality: it is where nearly everyone in town does their first dive, their refresher, their buoyancy work and their night dive. The lighthouse the site is named after stands inland and is, as Sea Dancer notes, rather outshone by the neighbouring mosque.

Underwater the ground is simple and useful. A shallow sandy area runs out from the beach to a shelf at around 6 m, then the bottom becomes a grassy slope and a coral wall that runs north, hung with large bommies and, deeper, pinnacles. To the right there is an extended flat of turtle grass and sandy patches. Sinai Divers gives 40 m as the site maximum and Diving Medicine School quotes 55 m; the shallower figure is the one to plan on, and most of the diving here happens well above either.

The life is small and worth slowing down for. Seahorses, seamoths, frogfish, ghost pipefish and crustaceans live in the seagrass and sandy patches; scorpionfish and stonefish sit in the shallows; moray eels work the wall. OBIS records for this pin are led by lionfish, twoband anemonefish, sea goldies and the Spanish dancer, along with the striped pyjama nudibranch and the Red Sea garden eel. Sinai Divers rates the Lighthouse the best night dive in Dahab, when Spanish dancers, anemone crabs, nudibranchs, octopus and morays come out. Sea Dancer reports turtles, morays, large Napoleon wrasse and eagle rays, and Girls That Scuba notes a resident turtle in the summer months.

Two things make the Lighthouse unusual. The first is that dive centres have built training furniture into it: a buoyancy park with hoops and a set of sculptures, including a large elephant welded out of scrap. The second is freediving. Sea Dancer records training lines set offshore at 20, 35 and 40 m, and Dahab's freediving schools use the Lighthouse as their main site for AIDA 2 and AIDA 3 courses, with the 6 m shelf dropping straight to a 30 m-plus wall a short swim from the beach. Expect other people's lines, buoys and safety divers in the water above you.

• Walk-in shore entry in the middle of town, a few steps from the dive centres
• Shelf at about 6 m dropping to a coral wall running north, with bommies and deeper pinnacles
• Turtle-grass flat to the right holding seahorses, seamoths, ghost pipefish and frogfish
• Buoyancy park with hoops and an underwater sculpture set including an elephant made of scrap metal
• Freediving lines set offshore at 20, 35 and 40 m
• Night dive with Spanish dancers, octopus, anemone crabs and morays

Conditions

Flat, sheltered water at the north end of Dahab bay, entered on foot from the beach. Current is uncommon and the entry and exit are among the easiest in town, which is why the site stays diveable when wind closes other options. Below the entry a shallow sandy shelf sits at about 6 m before the grassy slope and the coral wall. It is busy from morning to night: courses, refreshers, freediving lines and, after dark, night dives.

On current: Sinai Divers records currents as uncommon here and describes one of the easiest entries and exits in Dahab, sheltered enough that diving is always possible; the freediving schools that use it daily rely on the same flat water. Depth is where the sources split: Sinai Divers gives 40 m as the maximum, Diving Medicine School quotes 55 m, and Sea Dancer describes deep pinnacles and runs Deep Diver specialty training here. Forty metres is recorded as the conservative figure. In practice the recreational dive is a shallow shelf, a grassy slope and a wall, and the depth is available rather than necessary.

Dives & underwater footage