Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · sea · Dahab and the Gulf of Aqaba

🇪🇬 The Canyon, Dahab

Dahab, South Sinai, Egypt

A fissure in the reef roofed over by coral, entered through a hole in the ceiling at about 20 m and swum along in near-darkness with light coming through the cracks.

Dives here
2
Deepest
30 m
Water
salt
First · last
2008 · 2008

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Neutral geo_source; seed map removed · Dennis Bakhuis
  2. 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

Reef flatReef flatLagoon 3 mCoral gardenReef edge↓10 m↓25 mThe CanyonUsual route · 807 mEntry Canyon (beach, lagoon)↓0 mFishbowl (entry hole into the canyon)↓20 mCanyon exit↓52 mCoral tower with cave and glassfish↓15 mGarden eels on sand↓10 mCoral headN50 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Point of interest
  • Pinnacle / rock
  • Shoreline
  • Depth contour
  • Dive path
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Shallows
  • Coral / reef
  • Sand
  • Depth
Site map · 13 objects · 1 path · max 52 m

Entry from the beach through the sandy lagoon cut into the reef flat, out over the coral garden to the bottom of the canyon, up through it to the fishbowl hole at about 20 m, past the coral tower with its cave at 15 m and back to the lagoon; the canyon floor runs out to 52 m. The canyon, coral heads, depths and route are approximate. Coastline from OpenStreetMap.

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

Twenty minutes north of Dahab, entered through a sheltered lagoon in the reef flat. You cross a shallow coral garden, reach the drop-off, and find a crack in the seabed that has been roofed over by growing coral until it became a tunnel.

The usual entry — the fish bowl — is a gap in that roof at about 20 m. You drop through it into a chamber, and from there the canyon runs down and out towards the sea, narrowing, with the floor at about 30 m at the far end. It is dark inside, shafts of light come down through gaps in the roof, and there is a permanent pocket of exhaled air trapped against the ceiling that everyone pokes with a finger.

Most people do the canyon first and spend the rest of the dive in the coral garden on the way back, which is the sensible profile.

Dived 7 August 2008; dive 67 the same day carried on south from the same entry into Coral Garden. There is a hand-drawn seed map for this site in data/dive_site_maps/seed/.

Dived here with

Hatsumi Kim

Nearby sites

2 dives at The Canyon, Dahab

  1. 11 Aug 2008 with Hatsumi, Kim date11 Aug 2008 depth30 m time70 min water—
  2. 7 Aug 2008 with Kim date7 Aug 2008 depth29.9 m time60 min water—

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)