Рас-Мохаммед

Ras Mohammed is a famous national park in Egypt, located in the Sinai Peninsula. Its territory is surrounded by coral reefs with a colossal variety of marine life. This corner of the warm Red Sea is rightly considered one of the world’s best diving sites, attracting hundreds of thousands of dive enthusiasts to the amazing underwater world.

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Video: Ras Mohammed

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Highlights

Ras Mohammed National Park surprises with pristine coastal landscapes and coral underwater reefs of stunning beauty teeming with exotic marine life. This remote location became world famous thanks to French ocean scientist and traveler Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who explored the coral reefs in southern Sinai in 1956.

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Today, Ras Mohammed National Park is extremely popular with divers, featuring prominently among international tourist destinations. Bus tours and mini boat cruises are organized from all resorts in South Sinai to Ras Mohammed Park. As a rule, the excursions last 4-5 hours, then travelers go to their hotels, because in the reserve the construction of hotels is prohibited.

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Ras Mohammed is spread over an area of 480 square kilometers, and most of it is occupied by the sea area with coral reefs. The protected area also includes the uninhabited islands of Sanafir and Tiran. The park is under the jurisdiction of the Egyptian Environmental Protection Agency. Specialists regularly monitor the state of the biosphere in the sea and on land, making sure that the fragile balance of the natural reserve, which receives up to 250,000 visitors annually, is maintained.

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Strict environmental safety rules allow the landscape and biosphere of the protected area to be preserved in pristine condition. The closest seaside resort to the national park is the city of Sharm el-Sheikh, where there is an international airport.

‘ Entrance to Ras Mohammed National Park
‘ View of the reserve from the water
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History

In antiquity, navigators of the Hellenistic world called the sharp end of the Sinai Peninsula the Cape of Poseidon. Later, Arab sailors called it Ras Mohammed, which means “head” or “shape” of the prophet Mohammed. Indeed, the outline of one of the prominent coastal cliffs at the surf line resembles the stern face of a bearded nomad gazing out over the expanse of the sea.

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Until the 1960s, South Sinai was a sparsely populated and inaccessible region. From the earliest times there were only a few Bedouin tribes, and in the early Christian era, hermit monks lived in mountain caves. In the first half of the last century, settlements of workers employed in mineral mines and oil fields appeared here.

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During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Sinai Peninsula was captured by Israeli troops. After the return of the occupied territory to Egypt, the peculiar landscapes of South Sinai attracted the attention of travelers, ecologists and owners of international tourist companies. Fashionable resorts sprang up here, and in 1983 part of the coastal area and adjacent islands were declared the country’s first natural national park, Ras Mohammed.

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Geography

Ras Mohammed National Park is located on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula in the Red Sea, 12 kilometers southwest of the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. This rocky ledge, which completes the Sinai, is connected to the main land mass by a narrow sandy spit, along which the road to the reserve runs. The promontory consists of the remains of ancient coral, once lifted from the depths of the sea by a powerful earthquake. Its tip, like the arrow of a compass, points directly south, and serves as a kind of watershed of the Red Sea, separating Asia from Africa.

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Flora and fauna

The reserved water area is rich in marine life. The depths are inhabited by sea turtles, various mollusks, crabs, jellyfish. Scuba divers have the opportunity to admire more than 200 species of colorful corals. Some of their varieties are endemics. The rocks are covered with algae, resembling underwater gardens. There are over 1,000 species of fish, including hammerhead shark, tuna, stingray, barracuda, moray eel, giant Napoleon fish weighing up to 300 kilograms.

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The most graceful inhabitants of coral reefs – a variety of winged fish. These marvelous fish are desirable objects for spectacular photos. However, it is dangerous to approach them: in the halo of long rays of fins, similar to fringe, hidden poisonous spikes, their pricks are extremely painful. Divers should be wary of giant spinarogov with powerful jaws. During the breeding season, they become aggressive and attack anyone approaching the eggs deposited in the algae.

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Vegetation in this arid region is extremely sparse. The unpretentious dum palms, also known as gingerbread trees, dominate. Their oval fruits are a favorite delicacy of the Bedouins. The stony soil at the mouths of long-dry rivers also nourishes the stately acacia trees, which provide travelers with welcome shade. The roots of these trees penetrate deep beneath the cliffs, reaching underground water. Among the piles of cliffs and boulders there are tufts of hard grass and shrubs. In the southwestern part of the park, the landscape is decorated with a mangrove, a unique ecosystem that has adapted to life in the salty tidal zones of tropical seas. The trees grow on a small island separated from the Cape by the Mangrove Channel.

The largest predators living in the park are desert foxes, gazelles are found, and in total there are 14 species of animals and 220 species of birds in the reserve. In late summer, numerous flocks of storks stop in Ras Mohammed for a rest on their way to East Africa for wintering, and in spring the birds migrate in the opposite direction.

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Climate

The national park is located in an arid subtropical climate zone. Only in deep fall and winter do rare rains fall over the tropical sun-dried cliffs. The rainiest month is October, but even in this period falls no more than 3 mm of precipitation. From November to March the air temperature is + 18-23 ° C, in June-August the columns of street thermometers usually fluctuate within + 33-37 ° C.

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Sometimes, hot winds from the Arabian Desert bring extreme heat here. So, in June 2013 in the park registered a record temperature of + 46 ° C. And February 2000 was remembered by tourists as a real Sinai winter: then in the park was recorded “cold” of + 5 ° C. However, temperature “swings” practically do not affect the sea waters. You can swim here all year round, in the Red Sea water is invariably warmed up to 22-28 ° C.

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Attractions

‘ Sharm el-Sheikh to Ras Mohammed Park can be reached by tour bus, cab or rented car. There is no public transportation to the reserve. If you have purchased a diving tour, you will be taken to the dive site by private transportation.

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There is another way to travel to Ras Mohammed – by sea. All the resorts of the Red Sea Riviera organize boat trips to the national park on motor ships, yachts and private motorboats.

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