Tower

The dive

Tower is one of the local reefs on the Hadaba shoreline of Sharm el Sheikh, a few hundred metres from Sodfa and inside the ring of sites the Sharm day boats work every morning. What you actually dive is the upper third of a fault in the reef wall. Emperor Divers and Circle Divers both describe a canyon whose sides fall vertically for more than 120 m, and Red Sea Diving College calls the shape a U formed by two vertical walls. A shore diving guide for Sharm puts the outer wall at a straight drop of about 300 feet, roughly 90 m. The consistent point across all of them is that there is no floor under you in the recreational range.

The standard profile stays inside the first 30 m. Circle Divers' route starts at a fossil coral tower, drops to about 12 m onto a pinnacle that hangs off the vertical wall with a fan coral beneath it, follows the reef into the canyon at around 18 m, crosses a drop off at 22 m with pinnacles spaced along the ridge edge, and finishes over a large pinnacle with an overhang under it. Red Sea Diving College caps its dives here at 30 m, or 60 minutes, or 60 bar, whichever comes first, and runs the site as a drift along the wall rather than as an out and back.

Sources disagree about where the name comes from. Red Sea Diving College says a pinnacle rises like a tower in front of the canyon entrance; Circle Divers has divers starting the dive at a fossil coral tower; a Sharm shore diving guide attributes it to a rock formation above the beach entry point. They may all be describing the same feature from different sides, and nobody we read treats it as anything but a landmark.

Big animals are not the reason to come. Emperor Divers names parrotfish, moray eels and hunting trevally and tells divers to look for the cube boxfish. Circle Divers lists glassfish and cave sweepers packed under the overhangs, nudibranchs including the pyjama nudibranch, red fire sponges, starfish and sergeant majors, and puts the appeal in the light coming down the canyon rather than in pelagics. The taxa recorded at this pin match a healthy Sinai fringing wall: sohal surgeonfish, Rueppell's wrasse, bluecheek and diagonal butterflyfish, masked puffer, rusty and daisy parrotfish, royal angelfish, blue-spotted ribbontail ray and titan triggerfish.

• A vertical canyon whose walls are described as running past 120 m
• A pinnacle hanging off the wall at about 12 m with a fan coral under it
• A drop off at 22 m with pinnacles spaced along the ridge edge
• Glassfish and cave sweepers packed under the overhangs
• Named as a night dive site, with flashlight fish in the caves

Conditions

A short boat ride from Sharm, a drop on the reef and a drift along a vertical wall with the canyon on one side and open blue on the other. Light coming down the fault is the thing divers describe most. Current is usually workable and occasionally strong.

On current: Red Sea Diving College rates the site for beginners but lists occasional strong currents and dives it as a drift; Circle Divers rates it intermediate and also calls it a drift dive. We have taken the more conservative of the two gradings. Sources disagree on which way the drift runs: Red Sea Diving College describes it as heading south towards Naama Bay, which does not match the geography of the Hadaba coast, so ask the boat rather than plan a direction. No source we read gives a visibility figure for this site, so none is recorded. The 30 m maximum is a recreational limit imposed by the operators, not the depth of the site: the canyon walls are described as dropping past 90 m and beyond 120 m.

Best months: Mar, Apr, May, Sep, Oct, Nov