Ras Umm Sid

The ladder at the end of the El Fanar Beach pier lets you straight down onto the reef, and at the bottom of it you choose the dive. Turn right and the wall slopes up into hard coral and porites, an easy, shallow route. Turn left and it descends toward the fan corals, and with the current in your favour the route opens onto a plateau of soft corals and pinnacles, with eagle rays possible out in the blue. A third line runs straight out from the pier. An instructor who dives it from shore plans it the same way each time: head down toward your planned maximum first, turn, and come back shallow along the reef, finishing the safety stop as you swim toward the pier.

In the middle of the bay a large coral pillar rises among smaller pinnacles, where octopus hide. Up on the reef flat, dozens of giant clams sit in water shallow enough for the snorkellers who share the pier, alongside Red Sea anemonefish, butterflyfish and shoals of sea goldies. Boats skip the pier and run the headland as a drift along the wall, ending over porites coral with groups of goatfish in the shallows.

Sea fans are the reason to turn left. They cover the drop-off on the south side of the headland, above a plateau thick with life, and one Sharm dive centre calls the stand the largest gorgonian forest in Sharm. The site also holds a school of chevron barracuda and numerous batfish. The corner of the headland is where operators place the chance of a manta ray or a whale shark, one of them putting it in summer: an occasional encounter, never a promise.

After dark the bay changes character. It is recommended as a night dive for Spanish dancers and moray eels swimming free of their holes.

El Fanar Beach charges about USD 10 per person to use its beach and pier, and has a restaurant but no picnics allowed. The public beach is free, with cafes on the cliff above, and a swim of about 250 m east along the reef edge brings you to the same reef.

Currents can be strong along the cape, and snorkellers are advised not to go left of the pontoon for that reason. Divers get the same warning for the left turn: do not drift out into open sea, and keep a close eye on your depth, since that route keeps going down. Away from the wall and the pinnacles the bay is featureless and easy to get lost in, so carry a compass and take a bearing back to the reef before you leave it.