Marsa Alam and the deep south

Marsa Alam was a fishing and mining village until an international airport opened in 2003, and the coast south of it is the least developed diving in mainland Egypt. The characteristic feature is the marsa — a drowned wadi mouth forming a sheltered bay with a sandy, seagrass-floored bottom and a reef across its entrance.

That seagrass is the reason to come. It supports green turtles in numbers, and — far more rarely — dugongs. Marsa Abu Dabab is the best-known dugong bay in the Red Sea, and it is now managed: boats are kept out of the bay, the overnight moorings were removed, parts of the seagrass are closed to divers and snorkellers, and rangers patrol it.

Sha'ab Samadai, 8 km offshore, is a horseshoe reef whose inner lagoon is a daytime resting place for a large group of spinner dolphins. Uncontrolled boat traffic in the early 2000s was driving them out, so in 2004 the reef was made a managed zone and split three ways: an inner zone that is dolphins only, a snorkelling zone, and an outer zone for diving and mooring. It works; the dolphins stayed.