Marsa Mubarak Snorkeling - Swim with Dugongs & Green Turtles

Dugongs are seagrass specialists: an adult eats roughly 30 kg of it a day, and it has to be the soft, fast-growing kind. Marsa Mubarak has exactly that - broad beds of Halophila and Halodule spread across a sheltered bay with a sandy bottom and almost no current, so the meadow regrows as fast as the animals crop it. That combination is rare on the Egyptian coast, and it is why the same handful of dugongs keep returning to this one bay year after year rather than moving on.

The bay is also unusually forgiving. Most of the meadow sits in 3 to 8 metres, the horseshoe shape blocks the prevailing north wind, and there is no current to swim against. You do not need to be fit, fast, or experienced to be in the right place when a dugong surfaces - which is what separates Marsa Mubarak from the deeper, more exposed dugong sites further south.

A dugong is a three-metre, 400 kg marine mammal, the only living herbivorous one in the sea, and a closer relative of the elephant than of any dolphin. It feeds head-down with its tail up, ploughing a visible furrow through the meadow and raising a cloud of sand, and it usually has an escort of golden trevally riding just above its back, picking off whatever the digging stirs up. That sand cloud is often what your guide spots first, long before the animal itself.

A feeding dugong surfaces to breathe every three to six minutes, comes up almost vertically, takes one breath, and slides back down. If nobody crowds it, it will often carry on grazing with snorkelers watching quietly from four or five metres away. Sightings are wild and never guaranteed, but the bay delivers a dugong on roughly two trips out of three across a season, and green turtles on almost every one.

Pickup is around 07:30 depending on your hotel and the boat leaves Port Ghalib marina once everyone is aboard. It is a full-size Red Sea day boat: an open sun deck, a shaded upper deck, an air-conditioned saloon, toilets and a changing area, and a crew serving tea, coffee, water and soft drinks all day. Lunch is cooked on board and served between the second and third sessions, so nobody has to cut a session short to eat.

Group size is 20 to 25 guests. Because the bay is large and shallow, the guide splits the group and works one area at a time rather than putting everyone in the water at once - it keeps the meadow undisturbed and it means you actually get shown things instead of following a crowd. Bring a towel, reef-safe sunscreen, a hat and a light layer; a shorty wetsuit is worth renting between December and March if you feel the cold, since you spend a long time floating still rather than swimming hard.

Dugongs get the headlines, but the meadow is busy without them. Green turtles graze the same beds and are far less shy than the dugongs - it is normal to spend ten minutes alongside one while it crops seagrass and comes up to breathe. Hawksbills work the coral heads at the bay mouth instead, picking at sponges. Between the two habitats, spotted eagle rays cruise the sand channels in loose formation and blue-spotted ribbontail rays sit half-buried until you drift over them.

The seagrass itself repays a slow look. Its blades hide ghost pipefish, juvenile trumpetfish and cornetfish hanging vertically to imitate a stem, yellowsaddle goatfish sifting the sand in pairs, and the golden trevally that follow anything large enough to stir up a meal. Marine biologists count meadows like this among the most productive habitats in the Red Sea and among the fastest disappearing, which is a good part of why the bay is protected.

Dugongs abandon a feeding ground that gets harassed, and a bay that loses its dugongs does not get them back. So the rules here are not decoration: we approach from the side and never from in front, keep a distance of several metres, never swim over the animal or block its way to the surface, never touch it or its trevally escort, use no flash, and put only a small group in the water at a time. Fins stay off the seabed - a kicked-up meadow takes months to recover.

Your guide decides the entry point, holds the group in a line to one side of the animal, and calls everyone out if the dugong changes its feeding pattern or starts moving away. It is also the reason we do not promise a sighting: the moment a trip guarantees dugongs, somebody starts chasing them.

Dugongs and turtles are in the bay year-round, so there is no closed season. Water temperature runs from about 24°C in February to 29°C in August and September. Feeding is most active on an incoming tide, which is why the day is built around three sessions rather than one - it gives us two tide states to work with. Mornings are usually the calmest and clearest.

This is the most family-friendly big-animal trip we run. The water is shallow and still, buoyancy vests and noodles are available, and children from about six do it comfortably with a parent; non-swimming family members can stay on the boat and still see turtles and rays from the deck. Basic swimming ability is required for anyone getting in. In high season book two to three days ahead - the boat is shared and dugong days fill first.