Diving in Rocky Island & Zabargad

Two tiny islands, five or six kilometres apart, anchor the far southern end of Egypt's Red Sea near the Sudanese border. Rocky Island is the wild one: barely 500 metres of rock ringed by a narrow plateau that falls into deep water and strong current, with some of the best pelagic-shark odds in the country and a rare reputation for tiger sharks. Zabargad, the larger neighbour, is its calm opposite, with sheltered turquoise bays, coral gardens, a green-turtle nesting beach and an uplifted-mantle geology that gave the island its old name, Topaz Island. A single liveaboard week can run hard drift dives at Rocky and gentle reef days at Zabargad within the same 24 hours.

The pair's third draw sits in Zabargad's western bay: a reported Cold War Soviet spy ship resting upright in 24 metres of clear water, its identity still half a mystery. Marine life splits with the terrain. Oceanic whitetips, grey reef and seasonal hammerheads work the exposed walls, while green turtles, groupers and glassfish fill the shelter. The reputation is honestly mixed: sharks are never guaranteed, the diving is wall-heavy, and the southern reefs showed real bleaching stress in recent years. What the pair reliably offers is variety and solitude, a shark wall, a spy wreck and a turtle bay in one rarely-crowded stop.

Every dive here is from a liveaboard. The islands are uninhabited and 60 to 70 kilometres offshore, so there is no shore base and no day boat; trips run week-long Deep South safaris out of Port Ghalib or Marsa Alam, usually bundling St John's Reef and Fury Shoal. The marine park is strict about experience: a minimum of around 50 logged dives is widely required, with Advanced Open Water and genuine drift and deep experience expected, because the current at Rocky can sweep a diver off the island. Permits and reef fees are arranged by the operator and built into the trip price. Spring and autumn give the calmest crossings and best visibility, while strong winter winds can cancel the exposed legs. Night diving is banned at all the offshore islands. One honest note: choose your operator for the boat and the itinerary, confirm it actually reaches the pair, and set your coral expectations to a reef under recent heat stress.

Rocky Island is a small fossil-coral islet whose reef walls drop past 600 m; Zabargad is an uplifted block of the Earth's mantle ringed by a turquoise lagoon, mined in antiquity for green peridot.