Egypt Red Sea - Shabrour-north (Wadi Lahami)
Part of the regional summaries: Egypt and Red Sea
More info
Egypt (NOAA CRW virtual station)Shabrour-north, in Egypt's Wadi Lahami, recorded a bleaching figure of 74% of coral tissue, and one image shows a corymbose Acropora colony with its outer branches stark white and its interior still fully pigmented, one colony captured mid-bleaching. Published cover was 24%, and Reef Check's nearest station (Wadi Lahami House Reef 2, 1.85 km away) recorded 44% hard coral in 2023, by a different method.
سجّل شبرور الشمالي، في وادي لحمي بمصر، رقم ابيضاض بلغ 74% من نسيج المرجان، وتُظهر إحدى الصور مستعمرة Acropora عنقودية فروعها الخارجية بيضاء ساطعة وداخلها لا يزال مصطبغًا بالكامل، مستعمرة واحدة التُقطت في منتصف الابيضاض. وبلغت التغطية المنشورة 24%، وسجّلت أقرب محطة لـ Reef Check (Wadi Lahami House Reef 2، على بعد 1.85 km) نسبة 44% من المرجان الصلب في 2023، بطريقة مختلفة.
ترجمة هذا الملخص بالذكاء الاصطناعي؛ النص الإنجليزي هو المعتمد.
Three independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Four other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
5 of the 21 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
General benthic features
The reef is a broad sand plain studded with coral bommies and low patch reefs, giving onto a more built-up slope (e.g., Image 4).
Bommies carry mixed Acropora, pocilloporids, dead, algae-covered Millepora-type fire coral, faviids, and small massives; the sand between them is wide and open (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 3).
Coral cover
- Reference: Mayfield (2025)
- Data file: (Mayfield, 2025-appendix A)
- CoralNet submission package (accession #5546)
- 24% ± 14% SD across 100 photographs.
Stressors
The site record reports 74% of coral tissue bleached at about 25.8°C-weeks DHW on the survey date (22 September 2024; NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Egypt virtual station). One frame, in which Anderson noted healthy and bleached tissue together, shows a single corymbose Acropora whose outer branches are stark white while its interior stays olive-brown — one colony, one moment, both states. Another, "stingray and dying corals", puts a part-buried stingray beside a bommie carrying a white Acropora, a yellow-green fire coral (dead and overgrown with algae, not bleached), and pale pocilloporids. A crown-of-thorns starfish lies on the sand at the base of a bommie, directly beside a bleached white corymbose colony (e.g., Image 21).
Fish and other fauna
A gray shark cruises over a bommie field in which most colonies read white.
Comparisons with other data
The site record also carries an external cross-reference: Reef Check's Wadi Lahami House Reef 2 station, 1.85 km away, reports a mean of 49% hard coral across four survey years (2009–2023; 8 surveys), reported side by side with the CRD figure and deliberately not averaged.
Dive record
The first dive of the Wadi Lahami leg, early on the morning of 22 September 2024 (in at 07:45) 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, DINOv3 ran on the site's benchmark frames (the photographs the author annotated point by point), and CoralSCOP is the site's finished survey of its edited 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) | 24.1 | |
| In-house DINOv3 | 45.2 | n = 99 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 28.1 | n = 108 |
| CoralSCOP edited | 30.1 | n = 74 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 21.3 | n = 92 · SE 1.4 |
The four computer-vision methods disagree by 23.9 pp (21.3–45.2%) and read on both sides of the published point count (24.1%); the headline is the published point count because it is the site's published value (CoralNet-assisted: most frames were annotated by CoralNet's AI, trained and checked by the author).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” | 2026 | 1 station, 3.09 km | Records ↓ |
| Reef Check | 2009–2023 | 2 stations, 1.85–2.03 km | Records ↓ |
Coral Reef DiagnosticsYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)Within 5 km, 3 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 17 surveys between 2009 and 2026. Of the 2 stations surveyed in more than one year, 1 declined (by 12 points) and 1 increased (by 11 points) between their first and latest surveys. Two stations share the longest span (2009–2023); one, Wadi Lahami House Reef 2 (Reef Check, 1.85 km away), went from 56% in 2009 (mean of 2 surveys) to 44% in 2023 (mean of 2 surveys). Since 2021, station-year means average 46% (range 41–54%; n = 3 station-years from 5 surveys). This site's own estimate (24%) sits 20 points below the recent value up to 2 km away (44%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.
Collected by other programs using different methods (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects; 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | Wadi Lahami House Reef 2 | 2009–2023 | 44–56% (range of yearly means; 8 surveys) | 1.85 km | — |
| Reef Check | Wadi Lahami House Reef 1 | 2009–2023 | 30–46% (range of yearly means; 8 surveys) | 2.03 km | — |
| MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” | House Reef Lahmi Azur | 2026 | 54% | 3.09 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.