Zabargad

From a boat moored in the protected southern bay, you drop onto a coral garden where the reef wall meets a sandy slope around ten to fifteen metres. The current usually drifts you east, gently, past sandy patches and small pinnacles that fold into little canyons. The southern wall falls to about fifteen metres and then slopes on to roughly thirty before the real drop-off, so most of the dive stays shallow and unhurried. That is the whole character of Zabargad's south: a slow reef dive where the looking, not the swimming, is the work.

In the coves you comb the coral towers and sand for cuttlefish, octopus, blue-spotted rays and crocodilefish, with green turtles grazing the seagrass and groupers that let you get close. Beyond the bays the island changes its mind. The exploratory west and north dives bring walls, stronger current and the chance of pelagics in the blue, and the Russian wreck sits separately in the western bay [see zabargad-wreck]. One honest note on the reef itself. Some recent visitors found dramatic pinnacles and swim-throughs alongside a good deal of bleached, algae-covered coral after the south's warm spell. The pleasure here is the variety and the calm; the caveat is the coral's health.

Zabargad is the day you dive for range rather than one headline animal. A single island delivers a sheltered turtle bay, a coral-garden drift among dozens of slender towers, exposed walls with the odd shark, and a penetrable Cold War wreck, all from the same mooring. Nearby Rocky is all adrenaline and exposed shark walls [see rocky-island]. Zabargad is the calm, photogenic counterweight, the stop most divers come to relax on.

It also has a backstory few reef dives can match. This is a real island, mountainous and uninhabited, an uplifted piece of the Earth's mantle ringed by a turquoise lagoon, with the ruins of an ancient gem-mining community on shore. The green peridot mined here gave it its old name, Topaz Island. Gem island above the water, coral gardens and a spy wreck below it, Zabargad earns its place on the safari without a single guaranteed shark.

This is the macro and wide-angle day of the trip, and a slow, shallow profile is how you work it. The sheltered bays sit in the ten to fifteen metre range with mild current, so you can hover over a coral tower for as long as the light and your gas allow. Green turtles in the seagrass and the unusually approachable groupers are the obvious wide-angle subjects, and they tolerate a careful, low approach better than fish on the exposed walls do.

For macro, the sandy patches and coral towers hold cuttlefish, octopus, blue-spotted rays and crocodilefish, and the overhangs and swim-throughs fill with glassfish that catch the light. Hover the sand rather than settling on it, both to protect the reef and to keep the silt down for the next frame. Ask your guide where the turtles have been feeding; on a wide island, local knowledge saves a lot of searching.

Even on the calm side, carry a surface marker buoy and a dive computer. The southern bays are gentle, but every pickup is by zodiac, and the moment you move to the exploratory west and north walls the current and depth pick up. Listen to the brief before those dives and treat them as a clear step beyond the sheltered south.

Plan the Russian wreck as its own dive in the western bay, not an add-on to the reef. There is no night diving at Zabargad, so the rhythm is day dives from a boat moored in the southern bay. Set the season to what you want. August for turtle nesting and the warmest, clearest water; autumn into early winter if you want a chance at oceanic whitetips on the open walls. The reef is remote and a long way from a chamber, so dive conservatively and keep something in reserve.