Sharks in Hurghada — Are You Going to See One? (And Should You Worry?)
What sharks live in the Red Sea, where you'll actually encounter them, and the truthful — and reassuring — answer to the question every nervous beginner asks.
The short version
Sharks live in the Red Sea. You will probably not see one on a beginner dive in Hurghada. If you do, it will almost certainly be a small whitetip reef shark dozing under an overhang, completely uninterested in you. The Red Sea is one of the safest dive destinations in the world and shark incidents involving certified divers on guided dives are vanishingly rare.
What sharks you might actually see
On Hurghada-area reefs the most likely shark sightings are whitetip reef sharks (small, shy, common at Abu Hashish South and Gota Abu Makadi), occasional grey reef sharks at deeper sites, and very rarely a hammerhead in the blue. The big-name sharks of the Red Sea — oceanic whitetips, hammerheads, threshers — live further south at the Brothers, Daedalus, and Elphinstone.
If you actively want to see sharks
Talk to us about a southern Red Sea liveaboard. Brothers Islands in May-June for oceanic whitetips and threshers; Daedalus for hammerhead schools. These are world-class shark destinations and we book and run trips down there several times a year.