Egypt Red Sea - Salah (Wadi Lahami)
Part of the regional summaries: Egypt and Red Sea
More info
Egypt (NOAA CRW virtual station)Salah is a densely built reef — a spectacular Porites-and-Acropora slope with warm cream, gold, and deep maroon-red Acropora thickets under bright surface light, with a published cover of 28%. But the same reef is deeply stressed: 63% of coral tissue was bleached, with branching and massive corals affected together in single frames — brilliant white staghorn Acropora beside a bleached massive dome. The yellow-green Millepora fire coral in those frames was dead and overgrown with algae, which can make it look alive.
صلاح شعاب كثيفة البناء — منحدر مذهل من Porites وAcropora، بأجمات Acropora بلون الكريم الدافئ والذهبي والأحمر الكستنائي الداكن تحت ضوء السطح الساطع، بتغطية منشورة تبلغ 28%. لكن الشعاب نفسها تحت إجهاد عميق: ابيضّ 63% من نسيج المرجان، مع تأثر المرجانيات المتفرعة والكتلية معًا في الإطار الواحد — Acropora قرون الأيل بيضاء ساطعة بجانب قبة كتلية مبيضّة. أما مرجان Millepora الناري الأصفر المخضر في تلك الإطارات فكان ميتًا تكسوه الطحالب، مما قد يجعله يبدو حيًا.
ترجمة هذا الملخص بالذكاء الاصطناعي؛ النص الإنجليزي هو المعتمد.
Two independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
One other CRD dive site with its own page within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
5 of the 48 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
General benthic features
The reef is genuinely spectacular and genuinely in trouble at the same time, and the photographs make both halves of that plain (e.g., Image 4).
One crest frame shows warm cream and gold corymbose Acropora in the foreground, a deep maroon-red Acropora thicket behind, a stark white Acropora between them, half-and-half chromis and other damselfish crossing the top of the frame, all lit from a bright surface (e.g., Image 51).
Structurally the site is a well-built slope with a dense Porites-and-Acropora framework, dropping onto sand (e.g., Image 1, Image 3).
Coral cover
- Reference: Mayfield (2025)
- Data file: (Mayfield, 2025-appendix A)
- CoralNet submission package (accession #5546)
- 28% ± 18% SD across 218 photographs.
Stressors
The site record reports 63% of coral tissue bleached at about 26.0°C-weeks DHW on the survey date (23 September 2024; NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Egypt virtual station). One frame shows the same reef's other face: two large brilliant-white staghorn Acropora colonies with a bleached lobate coral below them and yellow-green Millepora-type fire coral at mid-left (dead and overgrown with algae, which can make it look alive), while the knobby massives above them keep gray-brown pigment (e.g., Image 2).
Comparisons with other data
Apart from our own published survey shown here, we found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, two MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” stations recorded station-year means of 49–67% hard coral cover in 2026; the nearest, MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” at Small Abou Galawa, 1.74 km away, read 67% in 2026.
Dive record
The first dive of 23 September 2024, the last day of the Egypt leg, with Red Sea Diving Safari.
CV model comparison
More info
The reference is this dive site's own published CoralNet point count by the author (Mayfield 2025, Environments 12:248, Appendix A; most frames annotated by CoralNet's AI, trained and checked by the author). The computer-vision rows are this site's own values: Claude is a blind point count of all of the site's edited photographs, and CoralSCOP is the site's finished survey of its unedited photographs. They are on different frame sets from the published count, a row under 30 frames is indicative only, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| Published point count (CoralNet-assisted) | 28.1 | |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 29.1 | n = 231 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 28.3 | n = 212 · SE 1.3 |
The two computer-vision methods agree within 0.8 pp (28.3–29.1%) and read within 1.0 pp of the published point count (28.1%).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
Within 5 km, 2 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 2026. Since 2021, station-year means average 58% (range 49–67%; n = 2 station-years from 2 surveys). This site's own estimate (28%) sits 39 points below the recent value up to 2 km away (67%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.
Collected by other programs using different methods (MERMAID is a data platform: each MERMAID row names the organization that did the survey, and its method is in the row's hover text), so these are context for the figures above, not a like-for-like comparison. Where a station was surveyed more than once, the cell shows either the range of its values or, as a single value, the mean of surveys made in one year. Station names are not dive-site names.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” | Small Abou Galawa | 2026 | 67% | 1.74 km | MERMAID |
| MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” | Shaab Hamam | 2026 | 49% | 2.21 km | MERMAID |
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and the organizations named in the data sources above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.