Abu Nuhas is a must-visit for any scuba diver who enjoys wrecks! It’s a very popular area for wreck diving, purely because there are four ships lying next to each other within recreational divers’ limits, plus one more that’s very deep. The area has so many wrecks because it’s a busy shipping lane, with a reef hidden just below the surface of the water. Ships sailing through The Suez Canal have to pass Abu Nuhas on the way out. Abu Nuhas is considered the final obstacle before the Gulf of Suez opens out to The Red Sea. Many captains over the centuries have possibly stayed awake through the Suez Canal before ‘taking their eye off the ball’ a bit too early. This has resulted in ships hitting the northern side of this submerged reef, less than four kilometres north of Shadwan Island. Abu Nuhas Reef is almost triangular in shape and the top of its plateau is very close to the surface, and easily visible from a boat during the daytime. Each of the reef’s three sides are approximately a kilometre in length, and there’s a ‘blue hole’ in the southwest. Currents that flow from out of the Suez Canal in the north meet other currents at the northern corner of Abu Nuhas. Conditions for liveaboard diving can be challenging above and below the surface, and this is no doubt part of the reason why so many ships end their days here. Captains may think that they’re past the hazards of the Gulf of Suez, but the final obstacle is among the most dangerous. Nowadays, most dive operators will use motorized tender dinghies to drop off and pick up divers, enabling them to leave the main boats moored up in sheltered safety nearby. There are many wrecks in the area, some from hitting reefs and others from wartime conflicts. The five remaining Abu Nuhas wrecks are all cargo vessels that sank in peacetime. Four of the five wrecks are easily dived by recreational scuba divers, and some of them are even accessible to freedivers and snorkellers. The fifth wreck is too deep (90m.) for regular divers. The nicknames of the four wrecks are from the cargo that they were carrying. These are ‘The Tile Wreck’ ‘The Lentil Wreck’ ‘The Wood Wreck’ and ‘The Wine Wreck.’ One sank 150 years ago and the other three sank in the 1970s and 1980s. Modern navigation, warning systems, and communication methods have prevented any accidents here in the past 40 years