SeaLogEgypt · reef · beginner
A hotel house reef 300 m from Coral Garden, entered off a jetty, dived mostly by the people staying above it.
This is the house reef of the Tropitel Dahab Oasis, a hotel on the coast road north of Dahab town. The dive centre operating there describes the reef as less than 100 m from the centre, reached over a jetty with a platform, and says the house reef belongs to Canyon Garden and is dived by their guests only. That places it exactly where our coordinates put it: 300 m from our Coral Garden row, 330 m from the Canyon, and 440 m from Abu Talha. It is the same stretch of fringing reef as its neighbours, with a private door.
The practical appeal is convenience rather than topography. The hotel sits within a few minutes of the Canyon and is a short drive from the Blue Hole, and the house reef is the warm-up, the check dive, the night dive and the second dive of the day. We found no dive-centre description of the reef profile itself - no published depth, no wall or slope geometry - so we record none. What we can say is that the surrounding reef, as described for the Canyon and Coral Garden a few hundred metres away, is a shallow lagoon behind a reef table opening onto a hard-coral garden along the top of a reef wall.
The occurrence records for this position are the standard Dahab coastal set and are essentially identical to Coral Garden and Rick's Reef, because at this spacing a 1.5 km sampling box cannot tell the three apart: twoband anemonefish and scalefin anthias lead, then sergeant majors, Red Sea bannerfish, speckled sandperch, masked pufferfish, purple tang and slate-pencil urchins, with broomtail wrasse, giant clams, regal angelfish, bluespotted ribbontail ray, lionfish, grey moray, day octopus and crocodile flathead behind. Treat the species list as the reef's, not as this particular entry point's.
Through the hotel. The house reef is less than 100 m from the dive centre and is entered over a jetty with a platform. The operating centre states it is dived by their guests only, so this is not a site you can turn up to independently.
Access to the site runs through a local operator.
Restricted to guests of the Tropitel Dahab Oasis, according to the dive centre operating there.
Sheltered fringing-reef conditions on the Dahab coast north of town, entered off a jetty rather than across a reef table. No source publishes conditions figures for this specific reef.
On current: We found no published depth, visibility or current figures for this house reef specifically. The dive centre describes only the access - jetty with platform, under 100 m from the centre - and the reef's identity as part of Canyon Garden. Rather than borrow the Canyon's numbers, which describe a roofed crack 330 m away and not this reef, we leave the baseline blank.
The dive centre operating the site states that the house reef belongs to Canyon Garden and is dived by their guests only. So in practice, no - if you are not a Tropitel Dahab Oasis guest you would dive the Canyon, Coral Garden or Abu Talha instead, all of which are within half a kilometre.
Over a jetty with a platform, less than 100 m from the dive centre. That is unusual for Dahab, where most shore entries involve walking across a reef table, and it is the main practical advantage of the site.
We could not find a published depth for this house reef and we do not invent one. The neighbouring sites give the context: the Canyon area is a shallow lagoon behind a reef table opening onto a coral garden along the top of a reef wall, with the Canyon's own entry at about 20 m. Ask the dive centre for the profile of their reef before you plan a dive on it.
The dive centre points out that the hotel sits right next to the Canyon and the Blue Hole. Our own catalogue puts Coral Garden 300 m away, the Canyon 330 m, Abu Talha 440 m and Rick's Reef 770 m; the Blue Hole is a short drive further north up the coast road.
The occurrence records for this position are the standard Dahab coastal reef set - twoband anemonefish, scalefin anthias, sergeant majors, Red Sea bannerfish, speckled sandperch, masked pufferfish, purple tang, broomtail wrasse, giant clams, bluespotted ribbontail ray, lionfish, grey moray and day octopus. They are identical to the lists for Coral Garden and Rick's Reef because at 300 to 800 m apart the sampling cannot separate the three.
Everything about the access says yes: a jetty entry a hundred metres from the dive centre, on a sheltered fringing reef, with the centre on site. We have no published depth or current figures for the reef, though, so treat that as a statement about the walk to the water rather than about the dive profile.
| Species | How often | Records |
|---|---|---|
| Amphiprion bicinctus | occasional | 17 |
| Pseudanthias squamipinnis | occasional | 14 |
| Abudefduf vaigiensis | occasional | 12 |
| Parapercis hexophtalma | occasional | 12 |
| Arothron diadematus | occasional | 12 |
| Heniochus intermedius | occasional | 12 |
| Zebrasoma xanthurum | occasional | 11 |
| Heterocentrotus mamillatus | occasional | 11 |
| Tridacna maxima | occasional | 9 |
| Cheilinus lunulatus | occasional | 9 |
| Pygoplites diacanthus | occasional | 8 |
| Chaetodon paucifasciatus | occasional | 7 |
| Thalassoma rueppellii | occasional | 7 |
| Pomacentrus sulfureus | occasional | 7 |
| Myripristis murdjan | occasional | 6 |
| Scarus ferrugineus | occasional | 6 |
| Taeniura lymma | occasional | 6 |
| Pterois miles | occasional | 6 |
| Arothron stellatus | occasional | 5 |
| Chaetodon fasciatus | occasional | 5 |
| Fistularia commersonii | occasional | 5 |
| Gymnothorax griseus | occasional | 5 |
| Octopus cyanea | occasional | 5 |
| Oxycheilinus digramma | occasional | 5 |
| Calotomus viridescens | occasional | 5 |
| Grammistes sexlineatus | rare | 4 |
| Holothuria edulis | rare | 4 |
| Epibulus insidiator | rare | 4 |
| Echinometra mathaei | rare | 4 |
| Dascyllus abudafur | rare | 4 |
| Acanthurus nigrofuscus | rare | 4 |
| Ctenochaetus striatus | rare | 4 |
| Cheilio inermis | rare | 4 |
| Pomacentrus trichrourus | rare | 4 |
| Mulloidichthys flavolineatus | rare | 3 |
| Acanthopleura vaillantii | rare | 3 |
| Arothron hispidus | rare | 3 |
| Bodianus anthioides | rare | 3 |
| Bothus pantherinus | rare | 3 |
| Cephalopholis miniata | rare | 3 |
| Chaetodon auriga | rare | 3 |
| Chlorurus sordidus | rare | 3 |
| Chromodoris quadricolor | rare | 3 |
| Coris aygula | rare | 3 |
| Genicanthus caudovittatus | rare | 3 |
| Hipposcarus harid | rare | 3 |
| Lotilia graciliosa | rare | 3 |
| Millepora dichotoma | rare | 3 |
| Paracirrhites forsteri | rare | 3 |
| Parupeneus cyclostomus | rare | 3 |
| Parupeneus forsskali | rare | 3 |
| Pearsonothuria graeffei | rare | 3 |
| Scarus niger | rare | 3 |
| Amblyeleotris steinitzi | rare | 3 |
| Scorpaenopsis diabolus | rare | 3 |
| Scolopsis ghanam | rare | 2 |
| Tridacna squamosa | rare | 2 |
| Neoniphon sammara | rare | 2 |
| Siganus luridus | rare | 2 |
| Tripneustes gratilla | rare | 2 |
The shallow hard-coral garden that wraps around the Canyon: the same shore dive without the overhead.
A roofed crack in the reef north of Dahab: an overhead environment with a recreational front door and a technical back one.
A quiet shore dive north of Dahab: an amphitheatre of coral off a reef table, dived only when the tide allows.
A quiet slope of salad and table corals 300 m north of the Canyon, usually dived as a one-way drift back to it.
A crescent-reef lagoon south of Abu Talha, dived rarely because the tide has to be right - which is why the coral is what it is.
A quiet coral garden south of the Blue Hole, entered off a jetty when the wind allows.
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