Best diving in Red Sea? Been to Sharm and Marsa Alam

Whats next?

Eilat, Taba, Dahab, Hurghada? Others?

I have been in Dahab and its a pretty awesome spot for diving (allthough I only did some snorkling there, but that alone was quite awesome). Also the town itself is very laidback you could easily spend 2 weeks there without getting bored.

[ Edit: Edited on 13-Feb-2009, at 10:38 by wouterrr ]

Probably more to the south, like from Jeddah, Sudan or Eritrea. Less visitors is less damage

If you can get to the southern end of Saudi there is some awsome diving. I worked in the Asir area for a couple of years and we would drive down to the sea and camp out on the beach and do shore dives since the reefs are so close in and it was always good diving. If you can get out to the Farasan islands it gets even better with very few divers and lots of top notch dive sites. I think that is where J. Cousto did some of his documentarys on the red sea. We saw several variety of sharks, mantas, baracuda, turtles,whale sharks and many other sea creatures. About the only alarming thing is that there are a lot of crown of thorn starfish attacking parts of the reef. Theres not many better meals than fresh caught lobster and fish over an open fire at the beach. Of course there is no alcohol in Saudi so you have to go with tea or fruit juice to drink.

I remember reading in the Lonely Planet Iran that there are some diving spots in Iran at the south coast around Kish Island. Oman is also rumoured to have some good spots. Not the Red Sea, but I figure it cannot hurt you to know this too.