The Canyon - Dive site - Egypt

A guide to scuba diving at The Canyon

Dive site: The Canyon

Location: Egypt, North Sinai

Dive type: Canyon dive, reef dive, shore dive.

Skill level: Beginner

Visibility: Average visibility at the The Canyon is 20m / 65ft.

Depth: Depths at The Canyon varies from 3-50+ m / 10-164ft+.

Water temperature: Varying from 20°C / 68°F to 27°C / 81°F depending on season. The coldest month at The Canyon is February, while September is the hottest.

Dive site information: The Canyon is called so because of the long canyon that stretches from the north to the south. It is a comparatively narrow canyon, beginning at the shallow reefs just offshore and eventually reaching down to 50 m / 164 ft at the reef slope. You will access the dive site via a shallow lagoon, located in no more than 3 m / 10 ft of water very close to the shore. A good pointer when you are trying to locate the exit point at The Canyon is the three-trunk like pinnacle right outside the entrance to the lagoon. You enter the canyon around 10 m/33 ft from the reef face in about 12 m/40 ft of water. The entrance is to be found at a large coral mound. The opening in this coral mound is just big enough for a scuba diver to swim through, and allow you to enter the canyon’s top chamber. The chamber feels pretty much like a fishbowl occupied by glassfish. The canyon will then take several twists and turns before reaching a depth of 50 m /164 ft. You can see the open water above you through cracks in the ceiling most of the time when you swim through the canyon, but they are too small to exit through. There is one exit located at 30 m/100 ft. Keep in mind that you need scuba diving experience and special deep diving education to deep dive. There is a lot to experience around The Canyon that doesn’t require you to dive deep.

Marine life: The canyon is filled with schools of glassfish, and the reef outside is inhabited by many different kinds of reef fish, such as pufferfish, snapper, grouper, rabbitfish and basslets. Jacks like to swim along the reef. When it comes to corals, the canyon is pretty barren but the outside reef is quite covered in coral.

Marine life: While scuba diving at Little Brother you can enjoy an outstanding coral growth and particularly the diversity of the soft corals is breathtaking. Schooling fish is attracted to this dive site en masse, and can sometimes almost look like a solid wall that blocks out the light. Scuba diving here will let you encounter endless schools of unicorns, snappers and surgeonfish – just to mention a few of the many species. There are several kinds of sharks drawn to this remote reef, including whitetip reef shark, gray reef shark, tiger shark, hammerheads and the rare oceanic whitetip shark. If you are really lucky you can even spot whale shark at Little Brother. Little Brother is also one of the riches areas for reef fish species, in diversity as well as in density.