Tulip Resort House Reef

The dive

The Tulip Resort house reef fronts the Royal Tulip Beach Resort and the neighbouring Magic Tulip Beach Resort, roughly a fifteen-minute drive south of Port Ghalib and close to Marsa Alam airport. The reef is separated from the beach by a wide, very shallow lagoon of about a metre, so there is no swimming out to it. Instead a pontoon runs about 700 m from the beach across the lagoon and ends in platforms with ladders directly on the reef edge; an intermediate platform sits about 250 m from the beach. The walk takes roughly ten minutes each way, and ORCA Dive Club Tulip, which runs the diving from the resort, moves tanks and kit to the end of the jetty on electric vehicles rather than making divers carry them.

At the end of the ladders the reef top starts just under the surface and then falls steeply away to about 15 to 20 m, where the bottom breaks up into coral fields and patches of sand. There are no bays or interruptions in it: it is one continuous fringing reef running north and south of the jetty, and the dive is simply a decision about which way to turn. Divers who stay a week generally report the southern side as the more interesting of the two and the northern line as straighter.

The water moves along the reef from north to south, which is left to right as you face the sea from the pontoon. Snorkellers use that to drift almost a kilometre south along the drop-off before coming out at a marked black rock in front of a small house, and divers do a shorter version of the same thing. It also means the pontoon ladders are the fixed point you have to plan the dive around.

What you see is fringing-reef fauna: twoband anemonefish in their anemones, butterflyfish, sohal surgeonfish, giant clams on the reef top, yellow-edged moray, lionfish and false stonefish, day octopus and bigfin reef squid, and green turtles that show up often enough to be expected rather than lucky. Spotted eagle rays and a coach whipray are on record over the sand. Night diving is run here and is one of the things regular guests come back for.

• 700 m pontoon with ladders straight onto the reef edge; gear carried out for you on electric vehicles
• Continuous fringing reef with a north route and a south route from the same entry
• Reef top just under the surface dropping steeply to 15-20 m of coral fields and sand
• Green turtles, yellow-edged moray, day octopus and bigfin reef squid
• Night diving on the house reef
• A one-kilometre drift south along the drop-off, exiting at a marked black rock

Conditions

Water 22 to 29 C depending on season. A shallow lagoon of about a metre inshore and a reef edge just under the surface that drops steeply to 15-20 m, with a persistent north-to-south current along it. The dive centre runs 08:00-12:00 and 14:00-19:00 year round.

On current: The current sets from north to south along the reef, left to right when you face the sea, and it is consistent enough that snorkellers plan a one-kilometre drift on it. Strength is normally moderate, but a diver report from the site records a spell of strong current with rough weather, so it is not always mild. The important consequence is not the strength but the geometry: the reef edge is reached by ladders on a pontoon and there is a kilometre of one-metre lagoon behind it, so drifting past your exit means a long walk or a long swim back. No source gives a visibility figure for this reef, so we do not publish one.