Egypt diving: what the Red Sea is actually like

What makes Egypt diving different from other warm-water destinations?

Most Egypt diving happens on the Red Sea coast, and the appeal is practical rather than exotic. The water stays warm all year. Visibility is usually very good, often better than divers get at home. Reefs frequently begin a short swim from the beach, so you are not committed to a long boat ride. Fish life is dense, even in the shallows.

Coral close to the big resorts has taken a beating in places. House reefs used by hundreds of people a day show it, with broken heads and worn patches. Go further out, or further south, and the picture improves quickly. Reefs along the remoter coast remain in good condition, which is why divers keep coming back.

Two things make the region unusually easy for beginners. Currents are mild at many sheltered sites, and the reef structure is steep, so shallow and deep diving sit close together. A nervous new diver and an experienced one can often use the same site. The step up to demanding offshore diving is then a real step, not a formality.

Where to base yourself on the Red Sea coast

Sharm el-Sheikh sits at the tip of Sinai, close to Ras Mohammed and the Straits of Tiran. It is known for walls, coral gardens and a decent chance of current. Day boats also run from here to the Thistlegorm, a Second World War cargo ship at Sha'ab Ali in the Strait of Gubal. One entry rule matters. Arrivals at Sharm can be given a free Sinai-only permit, which covers Sharm, Dahab, Nuweiba, Taba and St Catherine, but not Ras Mohammed, Cairo or Luxor. The park itself needs the full visa.

Hurghada is well served by charter flights and has a broad range of operators. It is busy, and the diving directly in front of town reflects that. Its strength is the offshore reefs and wrecks of the Strait of Gubal, reached on long day boats or on northern liveaboard routes. El Gouna, just north, is a calmer resort town with sheltered shallow water.

Marsa Alam lies several hours south and feels much quieter. Reefs there are in better shape, the bays hold seagrass, and turtles are common. Dugongs live in a few of those bays, though sightings are luck, not a scheduled attraction, and the scramble of boats when one appears is not pretty. Pick the south if reef quality matters more than nightlife.

Dahab is different again: an informal traveller town on the Gulf of Aqaba, with cheap rooms and shore diving you can walk to. Most of it is straightforward. The Blue Hole is not. People have died there repeatedly, usually attempting the deep arch beyond their training or their gas. Memorial plaques line the cliff above. Dive the rim; leave the arch alone.

Shore diving, day boats and liveaboards

Shore diving is the cheapest and most flexible option, and Dahab and parts of the southern coast do it well. You walk in, dive, walk out. Day boats are the standard everywhere else: two dives, lunch aboard, back by late afternoon. Both work well for a normal holiday, and most visitors never need anything more.

A liveaboard is a boat you sleep on for roughly a week, diving several times a day and moving between sites overnight. It reaches reefs no day boat can, and removes travel time. It also puts you in a small cabin, out of phone signal, with strangers, and nothing to do between dives but eat and sleep. If that sounds bad, it will be.

Routes split roughly north and south. Northern itineraries cover the wrecks around the Strait of Gubal and the Sinai reefs, and suit divers with moderate experience. Southern routes run to the offshore reefs, where currents are stronger, dives deeper and sharks the point. Operators usually set a minimum experience level, and a first liveaboard is no place to argue about it.

Snorkelling if you do not dive

Much of the reef sits within a few metres of the surface, and along parts of this coast you can reach it from the beach. That is the distinctive part, not the depth. Snorkellers see a good share of what divers see at the shallow sites: coral, reef fish, turtles feeding over seagrass. Families with young children, and groups where one person dives and another does not, are well served.

For snorkelling, sheltered bays beat dramatic walls. The lagoons around El Gouna, the bays south of Marsa Alam and the calmer coves near Dahab all work. Ask whether a boat trip actually stops at shallow reef, because some are built around deep sites where a snorkeller floats above blue nothing. If warm water and fish are all you want, skip the course.

When to go, and the trade-off nobody mentions

Water stays comfortable all year, but it does move. At its coldest, usually February and March, it drops to the low twenties Celsius in the north, and a thicker wetsuit with a hood stops being optional. By late summer it is in the high twenties and plenty of people dive in a shorty. The far south runs slightly warmer throughout.

Here is the trade-off. Summer gives the warmest water and the longest days, but inland Egypt in July and August is often above 40C, which makes temple days unpleasant and, for children and older travellers, sometimes unwise. Winter suits Luxor and Aswan, roughly October to April, which is precisely when you want the thicker wetsuit on the coast.

Spring and autumn are the sensible compromise. Wind is the variable people forget: windy spells happen year-round in the north and can cancel boat days at short notice, particularly around Sharm and Hurghada. Build a spare day into any trip where the diving is the point, instead of assuming every booked day runs.

Learning to dive here, and how to judge a dive centre

This is a reasonable place to learn. An entry-level certification usually takes three to four days: theory, skills in shallow water, then a handful of open water dives. Warm, clear, calm conditions strip out most of what makes learning hard elsewhere. Refreshers for lapsed divers are short and worth doing after a year out of the water.

Judging the dive centre matters more than the agency logo on the door. Ask how many divers each guide takes underwater. Check whether they run a check dive before anything serious, and whether they ask to see your logbook, because the ones that never ask are the ones to avoid. Look at the rental kit and whether the boat carries oxygen.

Insurance is on you. Standard travel policies often exclude diving, or cover it only to a shallow depth limit, and treatment for a serious decompression injury is expensive. Buy specific dive cover. Ask too where the nearest recompression chamber is; in the far south the honest answer can be a long way off, which argues for diving conservatively rather than staying home.

Fitting diving into a wider Egypt trip

The usual shape is temples first, coast second. Cairo and the Nile valley are hard work: early starts, heat, a lot of walking. Doing that after a week of diving feels like a punishment; doing it first turns the coast into the part where you rest. Most itineraries put Luxor and Aswan at the front.

Flying after diving then decides your final day. Training agencies advise a surface interval before you fly, commonly at least twelve hours after a single dive and longer after several days of diving. Follow whatever your own agency specifies. In practice your last dive must finish well before departure, and an internal hop to Cairo counts as flying.

So the last day on the coast is not a diving day. Spend it snorkelling, riding along as a passenger, or doing nothing. Plan a week around four or five diving days rather than six and you will not spend the trip watching a clock. Bolting two days of diving onto a short Nile cruise rarely works.