DAEDALUS AND FURY SHOAL

Over 180 km south of Brother Islands, this huge reef is surrounded by drop-off walls and strong currents. The hard corals have grown to enormous size! Here you have a great chance of seeing the well-known school of hammerhead sharks in the north-east of the reef.

This reef is known for shark encounters, whitetip reef sharks, hammerhead sharks, gray reef sharks, thresher sharks and of course what Elphinstone is famous for: the Longimanus – the oceanic whitetip reef shark.

Elphinstone Reef or Sha’ab Abu Hamra, located 20 km from Marsa Alam, is a reef no larger than 300 meters in length. Its spectacular steep walls drop down well over 100 meters on both sides of the reef. Strong currents make this a perfect drift dive along steep walls covered with many species of fish and soft corals. Here you can see barracudas, angelfish and hordes of anthias, groupers, moray eels and schools of sweetlips. The reef is covered with soft corals all the way to the north. At the southern end of Elphinstone is an archway with a depth of 65 meters, this is well beyond the recreational diving limit but ideal for technical divers. Whitetip sharks also occasionally visit this area.
Other species of sharks are regular visitors here – whitetip and gray reef sharks, as well as hammerheads and silky sharks can be spotted.

The east side is a large cliff, the west is less steep and a little sandier. Overall, this area has a lot of soft corals, sponges, gorgonians and giant whip corals.