Route Description - Daedalus, Zabargad & Rocky Island
World-renowned dive sites make this memorable liveaboard safari unique.
Best of the Red Sea is exactly what it's called. This liveaboard takes you to the best that the Red Sea has to offer. Some of the best dive sites, including Elphinstone, Daedalus, Rocky Island and Zabargad Island.
The Daedalus, Zabargad & Rocky Island itinerary is not for the faint hearted as most of the Red Sea it is really best for experienced divers with strong currents and challenging diving. This carefully thought out route is made is made up of world famous Red Sea dive sites making this memorable itinerary as interesting as it is unique.
Itineraries departs from Marsa Ghalib and offers a collection of some of the best dive sites including Elphinstone, Daedalus, Rocky Island and the Island of Zabargad. Night diving and snorkelling will only be allowed on some parts of this itinerary as it includes marine parks where this is prohibited.
Daedalus Reef: About 180 km south of Brother Islands, this huge reef is surrounded by steep walls and strong currents. The hard corals have grown to enormous size! Here you have a great chance on the famous hammerhead school in the north east of the reef.
Zabargad: A top dive site that stands out for its versatility. Here you can dive along cliffs, float over drop-offs, experience the open water feeling at the edges of the break, circle coral towers in the sheltered flat area and explore inlets, watch fish or simply admire this unique coral garden as you pass by. On the north side lies a nameless wreck. The 70 m long ship lies at 24 m depth. The entire rear impresses with its intact superstructure stairs, railing, davits, to portholes, hatches and the bridge make it a picture book wreck.
Rocky Island: Rocky Island is a legendary dive site that makes every diver's heart beat faster. The fringing reef surrounding the entire island promotes the growth of all possible life forms. The reef walls are full of the most beautiful soft corals, gorgonians, sponges, black and fan corals. Due to its exposed location and the small reef extent, Rocky Island is a very lively reef. Reef sharks, especially gray reef sharks and silver tip sharks can be seen in the open water and maybe even mantas and dolphins.
Elphinstone Reef: This reef is known for shark encounters, white tip reef sharks, hammerhead sharks, gray reef sharks, fox sharks and of course, for what Elphinstone is famous for: the Longimanus - the oceanic white tip reef shark .
Elphinstone Reef or Sha'ab Abu Hamra, located 20 km from Marsa Alam, is a reef no larger than 300 meters in length. Its spectacular cliffs drop well over 100 meters on either side of the reef. Strong currents make this a perfect drift dive along cliffs covered with many species of fish and soft corals. Here you can see barracudas, angelfish and hordes of anthias, groupers, moray eels and swarms of sweetlips. The reef is covered with soft corals to the north. At the southern end of Elphinstone is an archway, with 65 feet of depth, this is far beyond the scuba diving limit, but best suited for Tek divers. Whitetip sharks also occasionally visit this area.
Other types of sharks are regular visitors here - white tip and gray reef sharks as well as hammerhead sharks and silk sharks can be spotted.
The east side is a large wall, the west is less steep and a bit sandy. Overall, this area has a lot of soft corals, sponges, gorgonians and giant whip corals.
Night diving and snorkelling is only allowed on some parts of this route as it is prohibited by law in Marine Parks.
The exact route and reefs that are visited are weather dependent and depend on the diving experience of our guests.
Daedalus, Zabargad and Rockys start and end the dive cruise is in Port Ghalib.