Blue Hole

Because of its death toll, the Blue Hole earned the nickname 'Diver's Cemetery'. There is no official count: in 2014 an estimated 130 people had died there in the previous 15 years and, in 2021, around 200 in recent years, with 150 bodies recovered by diver Tarek Omar, nicknamed the 'sheikh of divers'. On the slope along the path to the site there were, in 2014, 14 plaques in memory of divers who died, and on the cliff face by the beach families have placed marble headstones with names, dates and phrases in several languages. In April 2000, Russian diver Yuri Lipski descended into the Blue Hole with a single tank and a helmet camera and never resurfaced.

On the northeast side of the hole, a horizontal tunnel about 26 m long, called The Arch, links the Blue Hole to the open sea and is a technical diving destination. At the site there are turtles, moray eels, Red Sea anemonefish, scorpionfish and stonefish, as well as great barracuda at the cleaning stations and jackfish off the reef wall. On the wall there are morays in the crevices, anemonefish on the terrace and blue-spotted rays on the sand. For macro, there are crocodilefish, scorpionfish, lionfish and ornate ghost pipefish. The wall is formed by Porites, leather corals and fire corals. The reef walls also have anthias, triggerfish, unicornfish and, occasionally, barracuda.

The water tends to be between 21 and 22 °C in winter and between 25 and 27 °C in summer. The site tends to be calmest and emptiest in the morning, with more people around midday. In Dahab, the best time to dive tends to be from March to June or from September to December, for the most comfortable temperatures both in and out of the water.