Despite its mellow style, however, Dahab is serious about its diving and its professional standards. There are lots of PADI-certified, high-quality dive businesses to choose from.
Because of the year-round warmth of the water in the Red Sea, rich coral reefs abound. Everyone who visits the area should experience the richness of the life that teems just below the surface of the crystal-clear waters. At first sight, it’s easy to imagine that these rocky outcroppings are tough and impervious tohuman touch, but this is far from the case. Touching the coral or walking on it will break and kill it, leaving behind a dead, gray wall and a hole in a complex ecosystem that can take decades or longer to heal.
Reef Island is a lovely concentration of brain and cabbage corals just off the shoulder of the bay that protects the lagoon in front of Dahab City. The aftermath of an earthquake has made some interesting passages through some of the corals.
Eel Garden is a colony of garden eels, which make their home in burrows on the sandy sea bed. Swimming above them, you see them extended vertically from their burrows like a little forest, bent a little into the current as they collect food from the passing water.
Ras Abu Galum is a popular spot to make a diving trek; arrive by camel or jeep, and spend a night or two at the Bedouin camp there. The reef has a variety of fire, brain, and table corals, and hosts a rich variety of sea life from emperor and puffer fish to turtles. What makes Abu Galum special, though, is the local population of sea cows, or manatee.