Dive Guide Book

Map of The Lighthouse Reef, DahabThis is often one of the most under rated dive sites in Dahab, mainly because it can be considered to be the “house reef” for Dahab. Even though large amount of divers dive this site, from both students to experienced divers, it hasn’t had an enormous effect on the quality of the reef.

Start your Descent

As you enter and start descending, you’ll notice quite a steep gravely slope, descending to a plateau to around 34m. The seabed is sandy at this depth. If you continue with the reef on your left, you’ll notice large coral blocks in front of you, stretching up to around 18 metres. These coral heads or blocks are covered in both various soft and hard corals. They cover various array of colours from bleached white, purples and bright reds! One night dives at this site the reef is covered in both red and brown Feather Stars.

Look out for the resident reef turtle, which can almost be described as the cow of Lighthouse Reef. You’ll always find it feeding on the coral in free abandon and usually unperturbed by the divers around it.

There is also a large range of fish, from various Parrotfish, Groupers, Pufferfish, both masked and Porcupine Pufferfish. You can also look out for a couple of resident Crocodile Fish that lie peacefully on the sandy bottom at various points on the reef.

The idea on this dive site is to zig-zag through the coral heads, slowly making your way up to the reef table’s wall, which descends to just 12m. When you’re ready to turn around, keep this wall on your right and spend the rest of the dive at a nice shallow depth enjoying the sites. You’ll know when you’ve reached the end of the dive when the coral reef suddenly disappears! When it does you can make your safety stop and exit.

Popular Night Dive

This site is a very popular night dive spot. In busy seasons, you’ll find large numbers of divers down there. The biggest danger is getting confused with which group you belong to. So keep a very close eye on your group members so you don’t end up getting stuck with the wrong group!

Windsurfing

Another favourite haunting place for this site is the windsurfers! In the past divers surfacing slightly away from the reef needed to be very cautious about being hit by overhead windsurfing traffic. The boards slice through the water at very high speeds and could cause serious damage to divers. Just recently how ever, the exit, entry and most of the site is now marked off with a string of pearl marker buoys forbidding windsurfers into the area. If you do happen to ascend away from the reef though, make a special note to look up and watch out for traffic!