Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · sea · The Strait of Gubal

🇪🇬 Shaab el Erg

Strait of Gubal, Red Sea, Egypt

A large horseshoe reef north of Hurghada with a resident pod of bottlenose dolphins in its lagoon, and the fallback when the weather closes the offshore sites.

Dives here
2
Deepest
13.2 m
Water
salt
First · last
2005 · 2009

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

Shaab el Erg↓1 m↓10 m↓10 m↓1 m↓1 m↓1 mOuter wall, 25 m+Gota Shaab el Erg, Dolphin House↓12 mMooringsPoseidon Garden mooringsLagoon, sand 8-12 m, ergs; dolphinsNorthern tip (mantas Jan-Mar)East wallN100 m
  • Buoy
  • Point of interest
  • Pinnacle / rock
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Shallows
  • Sand
  • Depth
Site map · 4 objects · max 12 m

Shaab el Erg, the big horseshoe reef north of Hurghada, open to the south: the reef arms round the sandy lagoon with its ergs where the dolphins live, Gota Shaab el Erg (Dolphin House) at the south-west tip with the channel the dolphins use, the patch reefs of Poseidon Garden on the south side, the outer east wall and the northern tip. The named places come from dive-centre descriptions (seawolf-safari.de, divessi.com, divers-guide.com), so positions are approximate and the lagoon ergs are not drawn individually.

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

Shaab el Erg is a big horseshoe-shaped reef, opening to the south, about 30 km north of Hurghada. The shape is the point: the inside of the horseshoe is a sheltered sandy lagoon with coral pinnacles standing in it, and it works whatever the wind is doing outside.

It has a more or less resident pod of bottlenose dolphins that use the lagoon, and a great deal of the traffic here is people hoping to see them. Outside the horseshoe the reef drops away properly and there are hard-coral ergs along the eastern arm.

The southern end of the reef is Poseidon Garden, logged separately.

Dived here with

Kim

Nearby sites

2 dives at Shaab el Erg

Dives per year

  1. 29 Nov 2009 with Kim boat date29 Nov 2009 depth13.2 m time58 min water—
  2. 31 Jul 2005 with Kim boat date31 Jul 2005 depth12 m time50 min water—

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)