Route Description - Best of the Red Sea Safari
The tour descriptions (dive sites) are samples. Depending on the weather conditions and the quality of the divers other dive sites can be chosen.
M/Y Golden Dolphin II offers a mixture of reef and wall diving around the southern Red Sea for 7 night charters on The Best of the Res Sea itinerary. She departs from Hurghada or Port Ghalib and visits St John’s Reef, Rocky Island, Elphinstone and the Island of Zabargad. The Red Sea has a high temperature and salt content due to its isolated location between Asia and Africa with a narrow passage to the Indian Ocean.
Top Dive Sites
St John’s Reef system is located in the southern Red Sea and offers exciting drop offs and pelagic action. The wall of ones of the reefs is covered in giant gorgonians and another overgrown with a number of colorful soft corals. You will see a lot of fish cruising in the blue waters with the occasional sightings of hammerheads, grey sharks, white tip reef sharks and silvertips.
Rocky Island is a fringing reef that circles the island and drops steeply into the blue waters, it is covered in beautiful soft corals, gorgonians, fans, sponges and black coral trees. Due to its isolated location sightings of reef sharks, grey sharks and silvertip sharks are a certainty with the occasional sightings of manta rays, sailfish and dolphins.
The reef at Elphinstone is sheer walls covered in soft corals with the north and south plateaus worth a visit when at the site. Due to the remote location of the reef you will encounter big fish like hammerheads, white tip sharks and dolphins.
The Island of Zabargad is an amazing dive spot as you get to dive along the walls, hover over drops offs and dive in the shallows admiring the coral garden and the fish. For wreck divers there is a nameless 70 metre long wreck at the north side of the island that lies upside down 24 metres down with the stern section still intact.
The Daedalus Reef lies south of the Brother Islands and is a huge reef formation that is surrounded by a sheer wall featuring a plateau on the southern side that has a 40 metre drop off. The best way to do this dive is to get as far north as possible and drift along the side of the reef to encounter reef sharks, hammerheads, surgeons, fusiliers and carangids.