Shark and Yolanda Reef

Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef — Ras Mohammed, Egypt

At the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, Ras Mohammed National Park pushes into the confluence of the Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba, and the diving here — at Shark Reef and its adjacent wreck site Yolanda Reef — represents the Red Sea at its most dramatic.

Shark Reef

Shark Reef is a submerged pinnacle rising from 70 meters to about 5 meters below the surface, with a sheer wall on its southwestern face and a gentler slope to the north. The name reflects what used to happen here with more regularity than it does today — schooling scalloped hammerheads and grey reef sharks aggregated at the tip in the 1980s and 1990s in numbers now rarely seen. The sharks are still here, but in smaller numbers, reflecting the broader decline across the Red Sea.

What remains exceptional is the fish biomass. Schools of bigeye trevally pack the water column in spiralling cylinders. Barracuda hang in mid-water formations. Napoleon wrasse cruise the wall face. The hard and soft corals on Shark Reef's northwestern slope are among the densest in the northern Red Sea.

Yolanda

Adjacent to Shark Reef, reachable by drift on an ebbing tide, is the MV Yolanda — a Cypriot cargo vessel that ran aground on the reef in 1980 and eventually slid off the plateau and fell to over 150 meters. The interesting part, now at 5–30 meters, is the cargo: Yolanda was carrying bathroom fittings. Toilets. Bathtubs. Ceramic washbasins. All scattered across the sloping reef, now colonised with coral, surrounded by anthias and butterflyfish. It is, depending on your taste, either the funniest dive in the Red Sea or a surreal meditation on the persistence of objects.

Practical Info

• Depth: 5–30m (recreational range) | Difficulty: Intermediate — current common; drift dive from Shark to Yolanda
• Access: Day trips from Sharm el-Sheikh (~45 min by boat); liveaboard itineraries
• Best season: March–May and September–November for calmest conditions
• Marine life: Grey reef sharks, barracuda schools, Napoleon wrasse, bigeye trevally; Yolanda's ceramic cargo colonised by corals