Giant stride into the Egyptian Red Sea and everywhere you look, on every dive you make, is a mind-boggling concentration of marine life. Large numbers of reef fish amass in swirling schools and an astonishing variety of coral and sponge species plaster every reef. Big pelagics like dolphins and sharks patrol deep wrecks and walls. As European divers have long known, it’s off-the-chart diving--one of the planet’s richest marine ecosystems in a sea that’s landlocked by desert on every side.

Bordered by seven countries, the Red Sea is a cleft of deep blue water formed millions of years ago when the Arabian Peninsula split from North Africa and the Indian Ocean flooded the basin from a small opening at its southern end. It’s relatively isolated and with little freshwater flowing in, the 1,200-mile-long sea is saltier than most other bodies of water and features eccentric and colorful twists on Indo-Pacific marine life.

Whether you go north or south on a live-aboard boat in the Egyptian Red Sea, you can dive a diverse range of habitats. A northern itinerary offers wrecks and deep walls while a southern one boasts beautiful reefs and coral seamounts. The choice is yours.

Southern Itinerary

When I first visited the Red Sea 1982, there was only one resort hotel in Sharm el Sheikh and one live-aboard, and some of the diving was done from seaside tents equipped with portable compressors and accessed via camel. Fast forward a quarter century and the diving infastructure in the Red Sea is greatly changed. But what hasn’t changed is how very special it is.

For this trip, I booked the MV Hurricane, a 120-foot steel-hulled dive yacht. The itinerary--the owners have dubbed it "Simply the Best"--is a one-week trip to three different offshore islands in the southern Red Sea. After arrival at Marsa Alam’s modern airport, we take a 10-minute ride in an air-conditioned motor coach to the huge marina development at Port Ghalib. This is an area that is experiencing growth--all around, we could see signs of new resort construction--and sun-worshipping Europeans will soon discover these beaches in greater numbers. But for now, Port Ghalib is a jumping-off point for dive adventure.

We spend a night in port and then steam offshore early the next day. To get our weights dialed in for the slightly saltier and more buoyant Red Sea, we make a checkout dive at a coastal site called Um el Rus. Because it’s so close to shore, the visibility is good, though not great. At first glance, Um el Rus seems uninspiring, but typical of Red Sea diving, the marine life is fascinating. Pufferfish rest in the sand and scores of cornetfish are in the shallows. Blue-cheek butterflyfish, endemic to the Red Sea, capture the attention of the photographers onboard. These butterflyfish are among the most docile of Red Sea reef dwellers, so we all manage to get close and take quality images.

Elphinstone Reef

Several hours farther offshore brings us here, which is within range of Marsa Alam day boats and offers our first glimpse of the stellar water clarity the Red Sea is renowned for. The lack of rainfall prevents freshwater runoff from degrading water clarity at Elphinstone Reef. The vis is impressive even at the surface, as the oblong-shaped reef comes to within a few feet of the surface and drops precipitously on every side.

While Elphinstone is often fairly busy, visited by both live-aboards and day boats, this morning we have the north end of the reef to ourselves. You can dive to an archway at 160 feet where you can encounter patrolling thresher and hammerhead sharks. We stay shallow, however, and are entertained by a large school of anthias, large crimson squirrelfish, masked butterflyfish, and a resident Napoleon wrasse eager to pose. The highlight of the dive comes not along the wall but at the bow of the boat where a very curious (or reasonably aggressive) oceanic white-tip makes very close passes at a snorkeler wearing yummy-looking yellow fins. September through April is considered oceanic white-tip season here, so to see one so close when we were there--in July--is lucky.

After a full day diving at Elphinstone, we begin our overnight steam north to one of the truly iconic Red Sea gems, the Brothers Islands.

The Brothers Islands

These spectacular islands, known in Arabic as El Akhawein, are accessible only by live-aboard and are subject to both wind and current. Because they’re exposed to current-swept nutrients, Big Brother (marked by a lighthouse) and Little Brother are magnificently draped in soft corals. In fact, the combination of crystalline blue water and soft coral concentrations makes the Brothers one of the world’s best wide-angle studios. But it’s not just about the reef scenics, for both islands present excellent opportunities for encounters with big pelagics and abundant reef fish.

We start off at Little Brother and find clear water and massive gorgonian fans decorating the vertical wall and reef slope down to 90 feet and beyond. Because of current, only the west side of the island is in the lee, but I have dived the east on a previous expedition and found it similarly remarkable. Some of the divers followed a deeper profile and are rewarded with a school of 12 hammerheads at 120 feet. After three dives at Little Brother, we move to our nighttime anchorage at Big Brother.

While this island offers plenty of vertical walls dripping with color and texture, its highlights are two shipwrecks lying along the deep slope of the wall. The Aida, the deeper of the two, sank in 1958. Technical divers can penetrate the wreck and explore her bow. Though recreational divers can see a bit of her at 100 to 120 feet, to really sample her treasures, you have to dive to at least 130 feet. That’s too little time and too much nitrogen for me, and besides, the shallower Numidia is one of my all-time favorite wrecks.

The current is truly ripping on the Numidia. On days of heavy flow the only way to get to the wreck is to drop in from an inflatable boat up current, beat fins to 100 feet, and drift into the wreck. On our first drop we’re put into the water down current, and there’s no way we can fight our way back to the wreck. We drift to the wall and find spectacular wide-angle vistas.

On our second attempt the drop is fine, but the current is still so swift we have to dump air from our BCs and swim straight to the depths. Even so, I barely avoid being swept past the wreck by catching the upright mast and make my way to the lee of the deck. Compared to my last visit, she’s not nearly as encrusted with soft corals, maybe as the result of a big storm. She’s still a great dive, but not the jaw-dropping confluence of crimson soft corals and schools of orange anthias that I remember from earlier visits. Still, she’s a must-dive at the Brothers, and eminently worthy of exploration.

Daedalus Reef

This massive offshore island is the final gem in the Red Sea’s offshore Triple Crown. It’s slightly exposed at low tide and marked by a large lighthouse that’s open to live-aboard guests.

Daedalus Reef is so big it’s really a series of four or more distinct dives. In fact, we do seven dives here and never exhaust the possibilities. The boats moor seaward of the lighthouse dock, along the island’s east side. A short dinghy ride brings us to the northwest end of the island. You can dive deep here, to 120 feet, where deep-water currents often attract hammerheads and even thresher sharks. We stick to the shallows where there are pristine hard corals dotting the drop-off, from 10 feet to 80 feet, and a unique pinnacle with a large mass of opal sweepers at the 80-foot mark.

Our second dive is off the southwest end of the island at Anemone City, which has a large concentration of anemone clusters, all with crimson mantles and occupied by large numbers of two-band anemonefish or Red Sea clownfish. The shallowest, and probably largest, cluster of anemones is in only 20 feet of water, and they punctuate the wall down to about 60 feet, enough anemones to occupy even our large group of active photographers.

On the boat during lunch we see several oceanic white-tips and a school of bottlenose dolphins swimming past. An oceanic white-tip also puts on a spectacular show during our overnight stay here as he zooms to the back of the boat to scoop up the shark-friendly detritus discarded from our evening meal.

Other highlights of Daedalus include a massive mushroom coral, at least three stories tall. Aside from the crowds of clownfish, you’ll also see lots of hawksbill turtles. We see three or four every time we dive along the south face of the island.