St John's Reefs · Egypt · Reef
Abu Basala
A maze of coral columns down to sand at 20 m
Photo: Alexander Vasenin · CC BY-SA 3.0
Abu Basala is the sheltered one. A long, sickle-shaped reef in the heart of St John's with no steep walls at all, it breaks up instead into a maze of columns, gullies and outcrops running down to sand 15 to 20 metres below. Boats schedule it as a relaxation dive after a run of drift-heavy days and lie behind it for the night.
Also known as Abu Bassala.
Where it is and how deep
23.3878° N, 35.8109° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
There are no steep walls here, which is the whole point of the site. The reef is sickle-shaped and breaks up into mazes of columns, gullies, cracks, outcrops, balustrades and folds that run down to a sandy bottom a mere 15 to 20 metres below. You dive it by working through the maze rather than by following a wall or riding a current line, and the route is yours to pick rather than the water's.
Boats put it on the schedule as a relaxation dive for divers worn out by the drifts elsewhere in St John's, and the reef is long enough to give the boat a sheltered berth for the night afterwards. The life suits the pace: turtles, stingrays, octopus, moray eels, lionfish and reef fish among the coral heads, at depths shallow enough to leave plenty of no-decompression time to spend looking at them.
Marine life and season
- Sea turtles
- Stingrays
- Octopus & cuttlefish
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Good | Fair |
Season follows St John's Reefs: Mar–Jun and Sep–Nov are the settled windows; midsummer is very hot and winter northerlies make the long crossing uncomfortable.
Dive videos
Abu bassala Mer rouge Egypte · Cyril Gicquel on YouTube
Questions divers ask
What is Abu Basala like to dive?+
Sheltered and shallow. It is a sickle-shaped reef without steep walls, made up of columns, gullies, cracks and outcrops down to sand at 15 to 20 metres, and boats use it as a relaxation dive between the more demanding sites.
Sources
- St. John's Diving, Southern Red Sea - Egypt — Dive The World
- ST. Johns - Red Sea World Travel — Red Sea World Travel
- Abu Bassala - OpenStreetMap relation 16662755 — OpenStreetMap
- Abu Basala — dive site details — scubadiving.place
Photo credits
- A slate pencil urchin with thick red spines wedged in a coral-encrusted crevice underwater by Alexander Vasenin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
More dive sites in St John's Reefs
Short caverns at 7 m under an overnight mooring
Tunnels and fissures cut into an 840 m reef block
Wall
Overhangs on the southern wall and a cavern you enter at 10 m
Grey reefs and hammerheads off an exposed pinnacle
Pinnacle
A ledge at 20–35 m circling a current-swept habili
Cave & cavern
Sunlight falling through cracks in the cavern roof at 6-10 m
Similar dives elsewhere
A gorgonian forest at 21 m and fusiliers packing the shallows
Freediving lines to 40 m and a scrap-metal elephant on the sand
One coral head, from a 9 m base to a table at 19 m
The Fury Shoals' longest reef, with a resident spinner-dolphin pod