Sunlight Itinerary

Rocky, Zabargad and St Johns (RMF)

Day 1: Once on board, you will be assigned your accommodation, receive a boat briefing, and select any rental equipment. The boat will spend the night in port.

Days 2-6: The boat departs from Port Ghalib early the following morning, setting sail for the offshore reefs of the south.

Further south are the spectacular overhangs and deep walls of Rocky Island and the abundance of soft coral and spectacular coral pinnacles at Zabargad.

Zabargad Island is a wonderful dive site offering wall diving, a wreck and shallow areas with dozens of slender coral towers. Here live a great many tropical groupers, which are easily approached and photographed during a dive without equals in its category. When diving here at night you will find octopus, crustaceans and nudibranchs emerge to crowd through the coral grottos.

Rocky Island is a small fossil-coral island that emerges from the surface, elliptical in shape, surrounded by a surface level reef. The island’s walls sink down to more than 1,000 metres of water. The walls are covered in soft corals and huge gorgonians which float and wave in the current. It is possible to sight many species of shark here as well as sailfish, dolphins and manta rays.

St John’s is a beautiful reef system which lies approx. 40km north of the Sudanese border and 20km South of Zabargad. It is a vast collection of small reefs offering some of the most remote and rewarding diving in the Red Sea. Habili Ali offers giant gorgonians and black corals whilst grey reef, silvertip and schools of hammerhead sharks might be found on the west side. Habili Gafaar is a mass of soft corals teaming with shoals of snappers, butterfly fish and barracudas. Mantas, oceanic whitetip, grey reef and silvertip sharks can be seen in the blue. Gota Kebir is a massive reef, famous for its tunnels and south plateau where jacks and barracudas can be seen and the occasional manta. The tunnels are ideal for novice cave divers.

Gota Soraya is rated as possibly one of the best wall dives in the Red Sea, with overhangs and cracks in the reef wall full of glassfish and sweepers and an abundance of corals, grey reef, silvertip, oceanic whitetip and hammerheads.

Day 7: After a morning of diving, depending on the following day’s flight schedule, we will return to port at around 15.30.

Day 8: Check-out after breakfast and no later than 10.00.

Sample itineraries are for guidance only. Actual itineraries may differ slightly due to factors such as weather, wildlife, logistics and local regulations.