Coral Garden

Despite the medium-strong current sweeping relatively flat topography, you’ll be surprised how much you love your camera on this dive site. The visibility isn’t always as crystal-clear as the rest of Aqaba, but then you see branching hard corals loom in front of you like a magical fantasy forest, you’ll see why that’s a good thing.

Clownfish closely guard their homes in Aqaba’s Coral Garden.

Pufferfish love the Coral Garden’s varied topography.

Morays, perfectly suited to this environment, grow large and plentiful but each coral head seems to create its own ecosystem. Frogfish are the dominant small predators here, crawling amongst lettuce and fire corals, and a careful eye uncovers a crocodilefish and torpedo ray or two prowling the sandy bottom. Schools of reef fish are everywhere, but stick close to the coral heads for protection from barracuda and other predators patrolling the area, just out of sight.

We’ll dive South, with the current, marvelling at the sheer variety Aqaba’s Coral Garden has to offer. We just need to be careful, because this is a very large reef and we could surface quite far from our planned exit point (in most cases, a dive boat – to dive from shore here, you’ll need to pay 10 dinar to the Royal Diving Club for access to their facilities and make a long swim out from their jetty).

Coral Garden is an excellent spot to dive or train with Nitrox (EANx) to extend bottom time because although the whole reef is impressive and every coral patch unique, there’s a lot to see and the best corals are found at slightly deeper depths.