The Canyon

The canyon mouth shows itself before you reach it: streams of tiny bubbles rise out of the seabed, the breath of earlier divers seeping back up through the reef. Getting there is an easy swim across a shallow sandy lagoon and out over a coral garden; from the lagoon exit the canyon lies to the left and the coral gardens to the right.

The crack in the reef wall opens into a large chamber, with walls up to about ten metres high that nearly close over at the top. Openings in the roof let divers drop in at several depths, somewhere between 15 and 22 metres. The recreational route settles on the chamber floor near 30 metres, then climbs to a smaller aperture at around 20 metres, slightly further west, and heads south along the shallow reef wall to the lagoon for the safety stop. Divers who have swum it talk about the rock and coral formations as much as the fish: the odd moray and scorpionfish inside, lionfish on the walls.

Below the floor the canyon narrows into a tube that runs on under the reef to a deep exit on the outer wall. That stretch is a technical dive.

The Canyon starts at a round coral bowl full of glassfish and descends as a tube to around 50 metres, and each stretch of that one fissure suits a different diver. Open Water divers swim the coral garden and look in. Advanced divers drop to the chamber floor, which is why Dahab's Advanced courses so often come here for the deep dive. Deep Divers can go a little further with one operator, and technical divers follow the tube to its end.

The glassfish bowl at the top is the Fishbowl. Divers once swam through it; it is now closed and partly collapsed. One couple called The Canyon an all-time favourite and dived it twice.

The Canyon is heavily dived. A privately organised dive, timed before or after the commercial groups fill it, gets the chamber with fewer bubbles and fins around you.

Northern Red Sea water is saltier than most divers are used to, at about 41 parts per thousand, so carry more lead than usual.

The Fishbowl is off limits: swimming through it is forbidden, and the dome is structurally unsound. Inside the canyon the walls close over and there is no direct way up.

The chamber floor at about 30 metres is the recreational limit, and the tube below it keeps dropping with no bottom to stop a slow descent. Turn at the floor, and keep an eye on your depth all the way back to the aperture.