Eilat · Israel · Artificial reef · Reef
Katza
Coral-encrusted pillars off a beach opened in 2017
Area photo: Yonatan Dodin · CC BY 4.0
A beach on Eilat's southern shore, bordering Dolphin Reef about halfway between the city centre and the Egyptian border, that opened to the public in 2017. The diving is around a line of giant artificial pillars whose submerged parts are encrusted with hard corals and Dendronephthya and hold a lot of fish. Depth at the beach is 18 m and the site's maximum is 30 m.
Also known as EAPC Beach, Pipeline Beach.
Where it is and how deep
29.5220° N, 34.9350° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The pillars are the site. They stand clear of the water and carry on below it, and their submerged sections are encrusted with hard corals and with fine examples of Dendronephthya, the soft coral that gives them their colour. Fish gather around the structure in numbers, so the dive is a slow circuit of the pillars rather than a run along a reef, with something to look at on every face of every column.
Depth at the beach is 18 m, and although the site bottoms out at 30 m there is no need to dive it that deep, since the coral growth and the fish are on the pillars themselves. Getting in is straightforward: a large car park sits directly beside the beach, which makes this an easy site to repeat or to combine with a second dive elsewhere on Eilat's southern shore.
Background
This stretch of Eilat's southern shore borders Dolphin Reef roughly halfway between the city centre and the Egyptian border, and the beach opened to the public in 2017. The giant pillars divers now circle are artificial structures standing in the water there; their submerged parts have been colonised by hard corals and by Dendronephthya soft corals, and the fish that gather around them have turned the structure into an artificial reef.
Marine life and season
- Reef fish swarms
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good |
Season follows Eilat: Divable all year; Mar–May and Sep–Nov are most comfortable, while July and August are extremely hot on the surface.
Dive videos
Europe-Asia Pipeline ("KATZA") Diving in Eilat, February 2023 · Oren Rosen on YouTube
Questions divers ask
How deep is Katza beach in Eilat?+
Depth at the beach is 18 m and the maximum depth of the site is 30 m, though local guidance is that there is no need to dive that deep, because the coral and the fish are on the pillars.
Do you need a boat to dive Katza?+
No. It is a shore dive from the EAPC beach on Eilat's southern shore, next to Dolphin Reef, with a large car park directly beside the beach.
Sources
- EAPC (Katza) Beach Eilat — Red Sea Eilat Guide
- Eilat Dive Sites — Aqua Sport Int.
- Dive at the EAPC station beach in Eilat — Google Local Guides Connect
- Dolphin Reef, Eilat (node position) — OpenStreetMap
More dive sites in Eilat
A fenced reef you walk into, with a slope out to 35 m
Reef
Black Sea bottlenose dolphins that are not trained to perform
Sand slope
A garden-eel colony on sand between 6 m and 18 m
Reef
Coral canyons to 16 m, then a wall that keeps dropping
Reef
One coral head, from a 9 m base to a table at 19 m
Artificial reef
A closed 1995 underwater restaurant on a shallow reef
An Israeli missile boat upright at 24 m, reached from the beach
Reef
A coral arch in 6 m of water, entered off the beach
Similar dives elsewhere
Hulls left when the Soviet Navy abandoned its base in 1991
A broken wartime hull at 12 m that the reef fish have taken over
Rockfish, greenling and giant anemones packed onto revetment boulders
Fish schooling in the shade under a working salt pier