Gorgonian Garden

Gorgonian fans the size of dinner tables materialise as you drop below the plateau edge at 20 metres. The wall is covered in them, huge fans perpendicular to the current, soft corals squeezed into every gap between. Drift south along the wall and the fans grow denser. Among the branches, longnose hawkfish sit motionless, waiting for the current to deliver small prey. Free-swimming moray eels cruise the wall face. Look into the blue for tuna and barracuda. On the plateau above, Napoleon wrasse circle with the confidence of fish that have been fed before. Turtles glide over the coral garden at shallower depth. The dive finishes with a crossing back onto the plateau towards the moorings, where scattered coral heads and crocodilefish on the sand extend the dive time at a safer depth.

This is Hurghada's deep-reef signature dive. Local dive instructors group it with the area's world-class sites, and diver logs bear that out: one Dutch diver with 870 dives recorded a whale shark here; a German diver noted eagle rays, barracuda, and morays on a single dive. The gorgonians are the constant. They need current to feed, and the current here is reliable from the north. That same current makes every dive different. Some days it is mild enough to hover and photograph the hawkfish on a single fan. Other days it howls, and you cover the wall in minutes. The depth and the current together give this site a character that the calmer Hurghada reef dives cannot match.

Nitrox is recommended. A 62-minute dive at 31 metres on air is aggressive gas management. With EAN32 the same depth profile becomes comfortable. The current is unpredictable, so carry an SMB and be prepared for pickup away from the drop-in point. The surface can be choppy at the entry, but the boat retreats to calmer water at the moorings and collects you after you surface. In September, titan triggerfish guard nests aggressively near the reef. Give them space. The gorgonian fans are fragile and slow-growing. Fin contact damages them. Maintain neutral buoyancy on the wall.