Eel Garden is the home to Dahab’s largest colony of garden Eels. They live in permanent tubular burrows on the sandy bottom, standing upright, heads bent into the current and picking at passing food. Eel Garden lies about 500m north of the center of Dahab and can be reached by pickup within a few minutes. Eel Garden is an especially popular and exciting dive site with different habitats (sandy slopes, shallow lagoons, and reef walls). You enter the water at a channel in the reef shelf, and can usually expect to see Napoleons, flounders, white-spotted puffers, and morays as well as more rarely Dolphins and Eagle Rays.
Eel Gardens takes its name from the countless garden eels that carpet the sea floor not far from the entry point of the dive. After walking over the reef plate to the entry spot which is a nine-meter canyon, it then broadens into a large sandy area that slopes down gradually. After diving along a jutting reef that lies perpendicular to the main reef the eels slowly come into view, waving to and fro in the current like synchronized swimmers who vanish back into the sand as you approach. Descend to about 20m where you will find a nearly flat section of the reef with coral boulders and several table corals. It is quite common to find a thick congregation of barracudas regularly patrolling the area. On your way back at around 5 and 10m you will see a healthy, wide range variety of both soft and hard corals, and look out here for the rare sea grass ghost pipe-fish.
