Saudi Red Sea - Abu Galawa (Yanbu)
Part of the regional summaries: Saudi Arabia - Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, and Red Sea
More info
Makkah-Madine Saudi Arabia (NOAA CRW virtual station) · Northern and Central Red Sea ecoregion mean=12.2°C-heating weeksAbu Galawa is a long fringing reef where a bare rubble-and-pavement shoulder gives way to a coral-covered ridge of bushy Acropora, Porites, and soft corals, with a requiem shark and pairs of masked butterflyfish (a Red Sea endemic) among the fauna. This April 2024 visit fell in an unusually cool window - zero accumulated heat stress, water at 26.5 degrees C - yet the published record still shows 25.3% of coral tissue bleached, even though the un-strobed photographs are too washed-out to confirm bleaching visually.
أبو جلاوة شعبة بَرِّية طويلة يفسح فيها كتف عارٍ من الحطام والرصيف الصخري المجال لحيد مغطى بالمرجان من Acropora الشجيري وPorites ومرجانيات رخوة، ومن كائناته سمكة قرش من فصيلة الريكويم وأزواج من سمك الفراشة المقنَّع (نوع متوطن في البحر الأحمر).
ترجمة هذا الملخص بالذكاء الاصطناعي؛ النص الإنجليزي هو المعتمد. Translated from the site’s shorter map summary.
3 of these 50 photographs are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
General benthic features
The reef is a long fringing structure with a broad rubble-and-pavement shoulder giving onto a coral-covered ridge that drops into blue water. The shoulder is dominated by dark, algal-filmed, and coralline-crusted framework with scattered small colonies — those are the near-zero frames. The ridge itself carries the coral: bushy and corymbose Acropora, knobby Porites, small pocilloporids, cream-tan arborescent soft corals (Litophyton/Nephthea-type) with polyps extended, and encrusting growth, with anthias, and damselfish streaming over it (e.g., Image 2, Image 3).
Coral cover
Coral cover is 18.1% ± 15.4 across 138 photographs, quoted verbatim from Mayfield, A.B. (2025) Environments 12:248 — Red Sea 2023-24 bleaching; CoralNet point annotation, Appendix A — a manual, diver-annotated CoralNet point count from Anderson's own published work, not a computer vision output and not recomputed here.
Stressors
This is the one Saudi visit in the set that fell in a genuinely cool window: the record shows no accumulated heat stress at the time, water at 26.5°C, and yet still 25.3% of coral tissue bleached.
Fish and other fauna
The site's set-piece is above the reef, not on it: a requiem shark passing in open blue, silhouetted against the surface (e.g., Image 1).
Pairs of masked butterflyfish (Chaetodon semilarvatus), a Red Sea endemic, work the deeper slope.
Comparisons with other data
No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.
Dive record
A spring dive on 19 April 2024 with Umluj Dive Center, the first of a two-dive day that finished at Mr. Umluj.
Other notes
The photographs are un-strobed natural-light frames, which matters for how they read (see condition).
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.