The water is impossibly clear. A sea turtle glides past, unhurried, before disappearing into a curtain of parrotfish, butterflyfish, and the flicker of a lionfish half-hidden in coral. You are barely a few fin-kicks from the shore on a casual Tuesday morning in Marsa Alam. Egypt’s Red Sea coastline is one of the most extraordinary marine environments on the planet, and much of it is within arm’s reach. The Egyptian coast alone supports around 200 species of reef-building corals, roughly four times the hard coral diversity found in the Caribbean. The waters host more than 1,000 species of fish and approximately 350 coral species, with an endemism rate of nearly 15 percent, whereas a significant share of what swims there exists nowhere else on Earth. Visibility routinely exceeds 30 meters. And crucially, many of the best reefs require no boat, no dive certification, and no special equipment beyond a mask and fins. Egypt’s coastline spans two distinct bodies of water, the Red Sea to the east and the Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast, offering a range of environments from shallow fringing reefs to dramatic underwater walls. Here are the…
