St. John's and Fury Shoals

Where are St. John's and Fury Shoals?

South of Marsa Alam, the Egyptian coast empties out: Hamata, Wadi Lahami bay, then nothing until the Sudanese border. Offshore, two groups of reefs make the reputation of the deep south. Fury Shoals, a few dozen kilometers from Hamata, is a field of shoals, lagoons and coral heads; St. John's, two hundred kilometers south of Marsa Alam, level with the Tropic of Cancer, lines up its pinnacles and coral islets in blue water that almost no one visits. These reefs are well protected and, for now, far less visited than those in the north.

What are the habilis and gotas of St. John's?

Habilis are pinnacles that rise from the bottom without reaching the surface: Habili Ali and Habili Jafar are the best known, coral towers you descend along their sides, gray reef sharks and the blue on one side, sea fans and soft corals on the other. Gotas are reef islets: Gota Kebir, the big one, and Gota Soraya, the small one, offer coral gardens, overhangs with whitetip reef sharks and drifts along their walls. Umm Arouk and its pinnacles, and St. John's Caves, a network of shallow caves and tunnels pierced by light, round out a week's program.

What are the best dive sites at Fury Shoals?

Sha'ab Sataya is the most visited site in the south: a huge lagoon ringed by an oval reef, guarded by seven coral pillars, home to a large pod of spinner dolphins that you visit with fins, mask and snorkel. Sha'ab Claudio, the best-known reef of Fury Shoals, is round and ringed with small caverns, especially to the south: shallow, easy caves, true cathedrals of light. Malahi, on the southern part of its reef, is a maze of huge pinnacles and canyons on a plateau, a playground to end a dive. At Abu Galawa Kebir, the wreck of the Tien Hsing, a 35 meter Chinese ship built in 1935 and sunk in 1943 on the route from Suez to Eritrea, lies at 18 meters, with part of it still above water; at Abu Galawa Soraya, a 17 meter sailboat sunk in 1980 shelters a myriad of small fish.

Should you dive St. John's on a liveaboard or from Hamata?

For St. John's, there is only the liveaboard: a week from Port Ghalib, with sixteen dives over six days, the habilis and gotas of St. John's, then Fury Shoals and Sataya on the way back. Boats generally accept Open Water divers, with the habilis kept for the most comfortable. For Fury Shoals alone, the dive villages of Hamata and Wadi Lahami, 180 kilometers south of Marsa Alam, run day trips to Sataya, Claudio, Malahi and Abu Galawa: a simpler and cheaper option, if you accept lodging at the end of the world.