Marsa Shouna

Marsa Shouna is a wide, sheltered bay that liveaboard captains use as both a warm-up and a refuge: a reliable dive when the offshore reefs are off-limits due to weather, and a place where coral block terrain and seagrass beds reward slower, more attentive diving than the deep south pelagic circuit.

Two routes define the experience. On the outer reef: a zodiac drop 200 metres north and a drift south with the wall on the right shoulder, working back to the mooring at 12-18 m. The topography guides divers naturally into the bay at that depth, and a weak southward current assists the return. The inner bay route stays inside among coral blocks rising from the sandy floor. Crocodilefish lie pressed flat against the substrate, stonefish sit motionless at the base of each block, and octopus shift colour as they move between rocks. When the sun sits low, light angles through the water and the sandy floor becomes the kind of photographic set piece that most divers miss by rushing to the next site. The seagrass beds in the bay's centre are where turtles graze and dugongs, when they visit, feed.

Night diving here runs Route B: the enclosed, calm water makes conditions significantly better than on exposed reef sites. The cryptic fauna that camouflages in daylight is easier to find under torch light, and the sheltered conditions make for a productive dive that most liveaboard programmes skip entirely.

One practical measure says more about this bay than any dive guide description: part of Marsa Shouna has been formally closed to motorized vessels after propeller injuries to the resident dugong. That designation means the seagrass beds where they feed are genuinely protected, not just marked on an itinerary.

The bay is wide enough that divers spread out across the entire reef, and multiple liveaboard groups moored at once rarely produce crowds: each boat's divers get their own stretch of seagrass and coral blocks to work through, without bunching over the same patch of reef.

Divers who arrive focused on pelagics sometimes find the relaxed macro character underwhelming, an assessment that shifts the moment they slow down and start looking at the substrate. The coral block terrain rewards patient, methodical searching. Sea slugs dot the coral faces. At busier, more obviously spectacular sites, most divers walk past all of this. One diver who describes his own taste as coral and macro, not pelagics, was direct about it: Marsa Shouna was reason enough to favour the deep south circuit over other Red Sea routes.

Shore access exists via a coastal road, but crossing the fringing reef is difficult, and hotel-compound piers planned to ease it were never confirmed built; zodiac transfer from Port Ghalib remains the standard approach. Liveaboards moor in the bay and can run multiple dives from the same mooring.

The outer reef section known as Shaab Shuuna carries a different profile than the bay, with seahorses reported there. Operators give different figures for how deep it runs, from about 30 m to 40-45 m, and logged dives here do not go past about 30 m; Advanced Open Water is recommended for that section. Sources also disagree on how wide the bay itself is: the diving atlas describes a 360-metre wide bay, while one liveaboard operator gives the inner lagoon a 150-metre diameter, possibly measuring a narrower stretch of the same site rather than a different figure for the same thing. Water temperature in October runs 28-30°C.