Abu Galawa Kebir

The wreck sits low against the reef at the western end, listing to starboard, so overgrown that it reads as much reef as ship. Drop onto the southern slope and the bow is shallow enough to break the surface at low tide, with the stern down around 17m. Glassfish pour through the shadows under the hull, anthias hang over the coral that has claimed the deck, and a giant moray usually holds somewhere in the structure. The wreck is small, and most of the dive is spent circling and drifting over it rather than going inside.

From the hull the route bears into the shallow lagoon and out across the western coral garden. Mountain corals, turquoise pools, and channels draped in table coral run shallow enough that an easy drift carries you when the current cooperates. A green turtle is a regular over the garden, and a napoleon wrasse tends to patrol the reef edge. The outside slope falls gently to a sandy drop-off near 30m for anyone who wants the deeper look, with the chance of a shark or a passing pelagic out in the blue.

Most Red Sea wrecks sit deep. This one does not. The whole hull is in recreational range, shallow enough that newly certified divers and wreck-course students dive it alongside experienced divers stacking it with a deeper neighbour. That accessibility is the draw, and the dense coral growth on the hull is what gets it called one of the prettier small wrecks in the south.

The backstory is best held loosely. The vessel is usually named as the tug Tien Hsing, also written Tienstin, and described as a 1930s harbour tug lost in the 1940s, but the type, length and date shift between accounts. The dive does not depend on the history. It depends on the combination you get in one shallow profile: a coral-grown wreck, a turquoise lagoon, a resident turtle, and a coral garden with swim-throughs. Few sites this easy carry that much variety.

This is a long, slow, shallow dive, so plan the gas for bottom time rather than depth. Carry a torch for the wreck's coral detail and the macro life under the hull, and for the night dives some operators run on the northern reef. The lagoon is sheltered, but the west-side drift and the outer reef carry more water, and current can strengthen in winter, so keep to the guide's plan and take an SMB onto the outer reef.

The coral is shallow and everywhere. Good trim keeps you off it. Going inside the hull is overhead-environment diving that needs the right training, a light, and a clear head; most divers do not. The reefs here came through the 2024 bleaching event with patchy results, so set coral expectations on the current year rather than on older footage.