Diving >>Daily Diving >> Hurghada Diving Sites

The Big Gubal Islands

Location: 27°35'32"N; 33°46'40"E
Description: Reef / drift       
Depth: 30m (100 feet)
Visibility: 40m (130 feet)

Entry takes you straight to a sand eel garden, which you must approach with care in order to aviod the eels hiding under the sand. There is a lot of life here including thousands of tiny fish in the water near the reef, octopus, clownfish, parrotfish, and butterfly fish. This is a very pretty dive.

Sha'ab Abu Nuhas:

Location: 27°34'50"N; 33°55'30"E
Description: Reef with five wrecks on it
Depth: 89m max (292 feet), mostly around 24m (79 feet)
Visibility: 20 – 30m (65 - 100 feet)

Sha'ab Abu Nuhâs is a large slightly triangular shaped reef located around two miles to the north of Shadwan Island (also known as Shaker Island). The translation of Abu Nuhâs is "Father of Brass", Abu being father and Nuhâs meaning brass. Whilst I have never seen any brass here, it certainly deserves its other name - "The Ship's Graveyard". It's location at the edge of the Straights of Gubal make the north side open to rough conditions, particularly on the surface where a large swell can make mooring difficult if not impossible. The northeast corner often experiences strong currents which can actually sweep down from the north and in from the east, meeting at the corner. This means that on the northeast corner itself, two currents meet and a diver trying to carry out research on the reef wall formation could find themselves stuck between two non-swimm able currents.

Abu Nuhâs is a wreck divers dream come true boasting four vastly different wrecks in very close proximity to each other and all within comfortable diving depths of 30 meters or less. The wrecks are located on the north side of the reef (see the Abu Nuhâs map in PDF format below) and this requires calm surface conditions for mooring. Back in the early 90's when I used to bring day boats here from Hurghada we often had no choice but to moor in less than ideal conditions, however these days most boats which come here have a RIB or boat tender. This means that the main dive boat moors behind the reef near a sand lagoon or behind Woodvalley Reef (a small reef piece on the west end). I refer to this extra piece of reef as "Woodvalley" due to the amount of timber located in the channel between it and the main reef (no doubt some of the cargo of softwood from the nearby Giannis D, washed here by the water flow. The tenders then ferry divers through this channel and out to the wrecks. If the weather really is too rough to dive for the wrecks, and if current allows Woodvalley Reef itself is a lovely dive. There is also the option of diving Yellowfish Reef (located on the south side of Abu Nuhâs) a reef which makes a lovely night dive.

Sha'ab El Erg:

Location: 27°23'51"N; 33°52'20"E
Description: Reef
Depth: 13m (43 feet)
Visibility: 30m (100 feet)

Sha'ab El Erg is a huge horseshoe shaped reef located north of Hurghada, with the open end of the horseshoe facing due south. You are unlikely to dive this site from Hurghada's day boats as it is too far north and there are more prolific dive sites nearer to shore. This site is used primarily by safari boats as a night dive spot or a spot to allow new groups of divers at the start of their trip to get familiar with the environment in a sheltered spot.
Whilst this reef doesn't boast some of the Red Sea's best diving, don't write it off. The West Tip is where I first dived with a pod of around twenty dolphins. As I rounded the West Tip with a disabled diver I had been finning for, she suddenly went rigid and started pointing; as I turned to look north a pod of large bottle nose dolphins, in perfect formation, came in for a few passes and then were gone. An amazing sight.
The way to dive this site on a more normal day or night is to think small, or as Malaysian divers would say - "go muck diving". Don't expect to see prolific coral (in fact much of the coral here is of poor quality), so instead pick a few square metres of reef and investigate this at a micro level. This is particularly good when night diving here, as you will see nudibranchs, featherstars and other micro-life that you'd simply pass by on many other dives. I have had some fantastic 70+ minute night dives here in 4 meters of water under the back of the boat.