Abu Dabbab Bay
The sea bottom in the bay of Abu Dabbab is a huge and flat, grass-covered prairie. The green vegetation on the sandy bottom of Abu Dabbab Bay separates two fantastic and colourful house reefs. It’s conjures up visions of a patchwork of algae, meadows of seagrass, sargassum patches and floating weeds.
You start your sea grass safari, simply by wading in from the white sandy beach in front of Blue Ocean Diving Center. The meadows are the residence of dugongs, the gentle giants. They look like prehistoric sea cows. It’s large. It’s big. It’s lazy. It’s slow. But it’s also oh so peaceful, gentle, sweet and absolutely not aggressive. It’s fascinating to see a dugong hovering over beds of seagrass in slow-motion.
Also prominent in the area are residential green turtles, some of them really huge in size. When they do not part the water with their claws, graciously swimming to find food, it’s a true diver’s challenge to locate them resting on the shallow bottom, covered by sand.
The northern reef is carpeted with a wide range of hard and soft corals. The trained eye will determine the shapes of fire corals, star corals, bubble corals, brain corals , leather corals and gorgonians.
Like the southern reef, the north reef is teeming with marine life with the presence of black-spotted and blue spotted stingrays, the lionfish, the giant triggerfish, striped butterflyfish, the stonefish and the devil scorpionfish. Don’t trigger the triggerfish. It is territorial to the bone.
Just like the northern house reef, the southern house reef can be reached by simply wading in from the shore or by zodiacs from the Blue Ocean Diving Centers. Again, the visibility is excellent and uninterrupted and the current usually weak.
It’s suitable for both day and night dives and for all levels. You can do the southern reef as a drift if you are certified to do drift dives. Blue Ocean’s unrivalled and extremely attractive offer of ‘unlimited house reef diving’ allows you to explore the reef anytime you like during the day between It’s truly an unique package of unlimited house reef diving, running daily from 08.00am to 4.15pm.