Eel Garden

Overview

Tucked into the Ras Mohammed National Park between Jackfish Alley and Shark Observatory, this Eel Garden is one of the park's gentlest and most overlooked dives. A sheltered sandy plateau running parallel to a small beach, it is named for the colony of garden eels that carpets its middle section, swaying in the current like a field of grass. Easy, shallow and calm, it makes a relaxed second dive or an ideal site for less experienced divers exploring Ras Mohammed.

The Dive

The dive follows a gently inclined sandy plateau that drops eastward away from the beach, typically worked in the 5–18m range with the option to follow the slope deeper to around 25m where the eel colony is densest. A small cave in the central part of the sandy ledge releases a striking V-shaped stream of sand — a quietly photogenic feature — and the plateau's midsection is where hundreds of garden eels stand half out of their burrows, retreating like a closing curtain as you drift over them.

The site sits well sheltered from current, but it is exposed to prevailing wind and swell, so it is dived on calm days and is usually accessed by boat. There is nothing technical here: good buoyancy to avoid stirring the sand and spooking the eels is the only real demand, making it comfortable for Open Water divers.

Marine Life

The headline residents are the Red Sea garden eels (Gorgasia sillneri), timid and endlessly watchable as they feed on passing plankton. The surrounding sand and the bordering reef hold blue-spotted stingrays, goatfish, and the usual reef community, while the deeper edge and the neighbouring Shark Observatory wall bring the chance of passing pelagics and, occasionally, larger visitors out in the blue.

Good to Know

This is one of nine dive sites inside Ras Mohammed National Park and is almost always combined with bigger-name neighbours like Shark Observatory or Jackfish Alley on a day boat from Sharm El Sheikh. Visibility is generally excellent, often 20–30m. Note that there is a second, unrelated "Eel Garden" in Dahab — this is the Sharm / Ras Mohammed site. Best conditions run spring to autumn when the surface is calm.