Egypt Red Sea - Shabrour-south (Wadi Lahami)
Part of the regional summaries: Egypt and Red Sea
2024-09-23
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Egypt (NOAA CRW virtual station)Shabrour-south was dived twice on consecutive days, giving 23% and 26% cover with 63% and 64% of coral tissue bleached; the two dives photographed different stretches of reef. On the second dive, a thicket of vivid pale-blue branching coral, a sign of fluorescent (colorful) bleaching, grew beside stark white bleached colonies on open sand.
غِيص في شبرور الجنوبي مرتين في يومين متتاليين، فأعطى تغطية بنسبة 23% و26% مع ابيضاض 63% و64% من نسيج المرجان؛ وقد صوّرت الغطستان امتدادين مختلفين من الشعاب. وفي الغطسة الثانية، نمت أجمة من مرجان متفرع بلون أزرق باهت زاهٍ، وهي علامة على الابيضاض الفلوري (الملوّن)، بجانب مستعمرات مبيضّة بيضاء ساطعة على رمل مكشوف.
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.
8 of the 20 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 mixed slope and sand system: coral patches and bommies over pale sand, giving onto a more continuous ridge with mixed Acropora, pocilloporids, meandroid and bubble-type corals, and encrusting growth (e.g., Image 2, Image 4, Image 5, Image 7, Image 9).
Coral cover
- Reference: Mayfield (2025)
- Data file: (Mayfield, 2025-appendix A)
- CoralNet submission package (accession #5546)
- 25% ± 15% SD across 223 photographs.
- The site record carries the visits separately: 23% cover with 63% of coral tissue bleached on 22 September (DHW 25.8°C-weeks per the NOAA Coral Reef Watch Egypt virtual station, 32°C) and 26% with 64% bleached on 23 September (DHW 26.0°C-weeks per the NOAA Coral Reef Watch Egypt virtual station, 31°C).
- Two dives a day apart returned similar figures.
Stressors
Anderson's 22 September frame of Acropora shows white branching colonies recorded as dead, beside a few small blue-tipped branching colonies (e.g., Image 3).
On 23 September, a thicket of vivid pale-blue branching coral, showing fluorescent (colorful) bleaching, grew beside stark white bleached colonies on open sand (e.g., Image 21).
On 22 September, a massive boulder carried a sharply bordered, pale pink-white patch, possibly bleached crustose coralline algae rather than coral (e.g., Image 22).
Comparisons with other data
The site record also carries external cross-references to two Reef Check stations 1.55–1.75 km away — Wadi Lahami House Reef 2 at 49% and House Reef 1 at 37% hard coral — reported side by side and deliberately not averaged.
Dive record
Dived twice on consecutive days with Red Sea Diving Safari.
Survey summary
Shabrour-south: surveyed twice in September 2024 (22 and 23 September) (CoralNet point counts; Mayfield 2025, Environments 12:248). Surveyed in partnership with Red Sea Diving Safari. Surveyed during the September 2024 Red Sea bleaching event, when nearly all corals at these Egyptian sites showed some degree of bleaching.
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 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) | 24.8 | |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 27.5 | n = 241 |
| CoralSCOP edited | 29.4 | n = 129 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 24.1 | n = 221 · SE 1.1 |
The three computer-vision methods agree within 5.3 pp (24.1–29.4%) and read within 4.6 pp of the published point count (24.8%).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Dive history
Coral bleached: computer-vision (CoralNet) estimate from the survey images, per dive, as published in Mayfield (2025, Environments 12:248), Supplementary File S1.
| Date | Time in | Max depth (m) | Bottom time (min) | Coral bleached (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-09-22 | 14:31 | 24.3 | 58 | 62.7 |
| 2024-09-23 | 16:06 | 21.3 | 59 | 63.7 |
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” | 2026 | 1 station, 3.73 km | Records ↓ |
| Reef Check | 2009–2023 | 2 stations, 1.55–1.75 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, 1.55 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 (25%) sits 16 points below the recent range of station-year means up to 2 km away (41–44%); 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) | 1.55 km | — |
| Reef Check | Wadi Lahami House Reef 1 | 2009–2023 | 30–46% (range of yearly means; 8 surveys) | 1.75 km | — |
| MERMAID project “Egyptian Red Sea Initiative - Egypt” | House Reef Lahmi Azur | 2026 | 54% | 3.73 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.