Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · sea · Marsa Alam and the deep south

🇪🇬 Marsa Abu Dabab

Red Sea, Egypt

The best-known dugong bay in the Red Sea — a shallow seagrass lagoon, now managed tightly enough that boats are kept out of it altogether.

Dives here
1
Deepest
12.2 m
Water
salt
First · last
2007

Revision 1 · changed 10 Oct 2026

History
  1. r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis

Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

1 map

North reefSouth reefSeagrass 10-12 m↓5 m↓10 m↓25 m↓15 mUsual route · 857 mBeach entry↓0 mErg 10 m↓10 m↓10 mGreen turtle area↓12 mGreen turtle area↓12 mDugong grazing area↓18 mMarker buoy↓12 mErgs 15 m↓15 mN50 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Buoy
  • Point of interest
  • Pinnacle / rock
  • Turtle
  • Shoreline
  • Dive path
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Coral / reef
  • Reeds / weed
  • Depth
Site map · 6 objects · 1 path · max 25 m

The wide sandy bay of Marsa Abu Dabab: the beach entry, the north reef with its ergs, the south reef, and the seagrass meadow in 10-12 m where green turtles graze and dugongs are occasionally seen. Coastline and reef flats from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL); the ergs, turtle and dugong areas, the marker buoy and depths are schematic and not to scale. Parts of the meadow are closed to divers under the protected-area rules; the route is a typical beach dive, not a signed trail, and all positions are approximate.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

Abu Dabab is a wide sandy bay about 30 km north of Marsa Alam whose floor is a continuous meadow of seagrass in 5–12 m of water. That meadow supports large green turtles in numbers, and the animal people actually come for: dugongs. This is the most reliable place in the Red Sea to see one, and it is still not reliable.

The bay is inside a nationally protected area and the protection has real teeth. Boats are no longer allowed into the bay; the moorings that let safari boats stay overnight were removed; parts of the seagrass are closed to divers and snorkellers entirely; and rangers patrol it. The rules exist because the animals were being crowded off their own feeding ground.

Dived 28 July 2007 to 12.2 m for 51 minutes.

Dived here with

Kim

Nearby sites

1 dive at Marsa Abu Dabab

  1. 28 Jul 2007 with Kim date28 Jul 2007 depth12.2 m time51 min water—

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)