Temple

A large rock tower stands on a flat sandy bay floor, ringed by smaller pinnacles and sheltered by the headland of Ras Umm Sid. The boat ties to a mooring in front of the pinnacles, and the descent goes down the left side, where a clownfish lives and where the current, mild as it is, usually presses. A sandy path leads to the deeper pinnacle, topped at 12 metres and full of soft corals, pipefish and glassfish down to its base at 18. To the right, a huge second pinnacle holds the swim-through, entered at 18 metres and left vertically at 14, and the route finishes across at the main pinnacle with its crack. An amphora is said to lie on the main pinnacle, washed over from the wreck at Amphoras.

Temple is a dive between towers, not along a wall: a necklace of small pinnacles around the central tower, plus a pinnacle standing far from the main reef that reaches the surface. Each tower has its own residents. Crocodilefish and large giant morays stay among them all year, lionfish sit on the rock, and octopus turn up too. After dark the same towers become a recommended night dive, with Spanish dancers out and morays swimming free of their holes. The name is said to come from old-time divers who thought the pinnacles looked like an underwater temple, or from the columns of coral themselves.

It is easy to get lost among the towers, and away from them the bay floor is featureless, so carry a compass and keep the guide in sight. An older report warns that once you lose the group the next way out can be a long swim, which is why a bearing back to the mooring is worth agreeing before you leave it. Scorpionfish sit on the pinnacles themselves, so settle your trim in mid-water and not against the structure.