Marsa Alam

Marsa Alam is Egypt's diving frontier, a remote southern Red Sea coast where the reefs are wilder, richer and far less trodden than those up north. This is bucket-list territory for divers, built around legendary offshore sites and a fringe of untouched desert shoreline.

The star is Elphinstone Reef, a dramatic offshore pinnacle with sheer coral walls plunging into the blue, patrolled by oceanic whitetips and grey reef sharks. Closer in, seagrass bays shelter grazing dugongs and green turtles, while Sataya and Dolphin House deliver reliable encounters with pods of spinner dolphins. Water clarity here is exceptional.

Come for serious, sometimes advanced diving in genuinely wild surroundings. The trade-off for that quiet is distance, but the reefs reward every extra mile south.