Shark and Yolanda Reef, Ras Mohammed

Is Ras Mohammed Egypt's first national park?

Ras Mohammed occupies the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, where the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba meet the Red Sea. Declared a national park in 1983, the country's first, it protects the cape, its fossil cliffs, its mangrove and the reefs around it. Underwater, the meeting of the two gulfs brings a nutrient-rich current: it feeds the corals on the wall and draws the schools. Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef are its two signature sites, at the far southern end of the cape.

What can you see at Shark and Yolanda Reef?

Shark Reef is a pinnacle whose outer face drops straight into more than 700 meters of water. The wall is covered in soft corals, sea fans and anthias, and the blue next to it is the realm of the schools: barracudas, trevallies and snappers by the hundreds in season. A sandy saddle at about twelve meters links Shark Reef to Yolanda Reef; that is where the resident Napoleon wrasse come to look at divers. Yolanda Reef, lower down, slopes as a plateau to 18 meters, and that plateau holds the most famous cargo in the Red Sea.

What happened to the Yolanda and its cargo?

The Yolanda was a Cypriot freighter that ran aground on the reef in 1980 with a load of bathroom fittings. The hull itself slid down the wall a few years later and now lies well beyond recreational depths, but its cargo stayed on the plateau, between 15 and 25 meters: dozens of toilet bowls, bathtubs, sinks, broken porcelain and the chassis of a car. Corals have grown over the ceramics, morays live in them, and the absurd, photogenic scene has traveled around the world.

What other dive sites are there in Ras Mohammed?

A day at Ras Mohammed almost always includes a second dive in the park. Anemone City, on the side of Shark Reef, lines up hundreds of anemones and their clownfish on a shallow plateau. Eel Garden is a sandy plateau of garden eels, often paired with Shark and Yolanda. Jackfish Alley owes its name to the trevallies patrolling between its two pinnacles, with a swim-through cave near the surface. Ras Za'atar, Ras Ghozlani and Shark Observatory complete the list, with quieter, less crowded walls.