Cave Diving in Southern Egypt

For an easy introduction to cavern diving, I can think of no finer setting than the reefs of St John’s and the Fury Shoal in the southern Egyptian Red Sea. At a few special places, divers can explore capacious swim-throughs, gulleys and canyons, at the same time enjoying some of the most impressive hard coral scenery anywhere in the world.

Several such cavern dives can be found in the mosaic of reefs known as the Fury Shoal, which lies just north of the Ras Banas headland. This is the land of the habili – the Egyptian term for a reef that rises to just below the surface of the sea – and the waters here are studded with outcrops of coral, a hazard to unwary or inexperienced boat captains.

The coral development in these shallow waters can create some impressive cavern systems, the most spectacular of which is probably Sha’ab Claude. Also known as Sha’ab Claudia, the reef was supposedly named after a dive guide who was especially fond of diving there – no one can agree on this guide’s gender, hence the two versions of the name.

Sha’ab Claude is one of my favourite dives. For most of the time, there isn’t any reason to go deeper than 15m, so you can eke out a 12-litre cylinder of air for at least 90 minutes as you bimble around the reef and its interlinking passages. Usually, dive boats drop you just outside the cavern system, so it’s simply a question of finding the nearest entrance and going for it.

Once inside the caverns, it’s easy to get lost, but whatever route you take will soon bring you back to an open section of the reef. Occasionally, a route will lead you into a fully closed dead end, but they are fairly easy to avoid; there is little risk of getting trapped.

Inside the passageways, shafts of light cut through the water, streaming down from holes in the cavern roof. Black coral grows on the walls, while blue-spotted stingrays patrol the ivory-white sand on the bottom. You can usually find a good smattering of fauna, but life is relatively sparse inside the caverns.

It’s a subtle environment, and your appreciation of it tends to grow over the course of a dive, as the afternoon sun sends shafts of dappled light flickering across the shadows.

The caverns are a visual treat, and with diving conditions so easy, it can be a wonderfully tranquil experience. A few years ago, I visited Sha’ab Claude with a group from Reading BSAC on a shipwreck charter. There were a few murmurs of disquiet at the prospect of doing a shallow reef dive, but every single one of the wreckies fell under the site’s peculiar spell, and surfaced with the sloppiest of grins.

Sha’ab Claude isn’t the only reef of this type in the region. Further south at St John’s, there is a similar coral labyrinth known as Umm Kharerim. The name translates as ‘mother of the tunnels’, and that’s exactly what you get – a playground of closed and semi-closed chambers, all linked with coral tunnels sufficiently wide for a couple of divers to swim alongside each other.

I first visited this site on an exploratory trip in 1993, long before it became a regular fixture on St John’s liveaboard itineraries. No-one on board was familiar with the reef, so we set off for a snorkel and found we could just about hold our breaths long enough to duck-dive between the chambers. After 30 minutes of exploring, I was lost inside the maze; I could see the liveaboard from the surface, but the reef-top was too shallow (and too jagged) to allow me to swim to it in a straight line. The whole ‘diving though a tunnel’ adventure became decidedly irksome as I went about the frustrating process of retracing my route back to open sea.

On scuba, you can take your time to explore Umm Kharerim at your leisure, as well as investigating the longer, narrower passages. The bottom substrate is siltier than the gritty white sand of Sha’ab Claude, so poor buoyancy can be more of a problem here.

Nevertheless, the combination of tight passageways and spacious chambers is as beguiling here as at Sha’ab Claude. Where other parts of the Red Sea are shaped by the energy of open-water currents, the caverns are defined by a potent stillness.

My memories of many dives blur with time, but anytime I want, I can close my eyes and be there… finning along a shadowy passage towards a shaft of brilliant light. I want to go back soon.