Diving the Fury Shoals and Elphinstone Reef

We recently had the chance to head down to the far south of Egypt. We don't go to the Red Sea much these days, although we did many years ago when we first learnt to dive. It was good to see how things have changed down there. Our trip was only for a week and in that time we saw two of the south's most famous reef systems.

FURY SHOALS: this reef starts near the developing resort area of Hamata. We were heading to Zabargad Resort where you can dive right off the resort jetty and along a truly excellent house reef. We found huge grouper, tame gangs of batfish, friendly octopus and a very, nice small wall.

The best sites are naturally offshore where a string of fringing reefs parallel the coast. There are some great dives, all of which have the most amazing hard corals in almost perfect condition. There is also a charming sailing boat wreck on Abu Galawa Soraya and at Sha'ab Sataya the reef has deep walls while the inner lagoon has a resident pod of spinner dolphins. The dives we liked most though, and were least expected, were Sha'ab Claudio and Sha'ab Malahi, both of which had fascinating swim-throughs and tunnels that led beneath and around the sections of reef and felt like some sort of crazy maze.

ABU DABAB and ELPHINSTONE REEF: Heading back towards Marsa Alam, we stopped at Abu Dabab. This bay is famous for resident green turtles and a lone dugong. We certainly saw the turtles - you could hardly miss these giants. There are 10 in the bay, 9 ladies and a male, and they are the biggest turtles we've ever seen. They feed on the seagrass beds and are simply, always there. The dugong, however, was elusive but we couldn't be disappointed after spending so much time with the turtles.

Nearby Elphinstone Reef was an absolute gem. Being there in the winter meant that access was limited, we could only go at 6am to beat the rising winds and rough waters. The reef is well known for attracting pelagics like chevron baracuda and Oceanic white tips.

We saw the barracuda but not the white tips, but again, we were far from disappointed. This has to be the most colourful reef we have ever seen in the Red Sea, plastered from top to toe in hard corals, soft corals, and every Red Sea fish that exists. This is quite a site and our only regret was only being able to do it once.