Qualla: Ras Muhammad National Park

Ras Muhammad National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand at the very tip of the Sinai Peninsula and the desert simply stops - cliffs of pale, layered rock drop away, and two seas press in from either side. To the west, the Gulf of Suez; to the east, the Gulf of Aqaba. Their currents collide here, dragging plankton up from the deep and feeding one of the richest stretches of coral reef on Earth. The ancients knew this cape and built a shrine to Poseidon on it, calling it Poseidion. The modern Arabic name, Ras Muhammad, means Cape of Muhammad - given, it is said, because the profile of the cliff resembles the face of a bearded man, the hard horizontal strata forming the nose and chin.

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Ras Muhammad National Park: The Wall Where Worlds Meet

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matt Kieffer from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0. What makes Ras Muhammad extraordinary is geometry as much as biology. The reef does not slope gently away here - it plunges, forming sheer underwater walls that drop into blue darkness. Two sites in particular draw divers from across the world: Shark Reef, a dramatic vertical fac...

Image: Matt Kieffer from London, United Kingdom | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ras Muhammad National Park: An Astonishing Census

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Woodym555, edited by Fir0002, CC BY-SA 3.0. The numbers read like a naturalist's fever dream. More than 220 species of coral grow in these waters, around 125 of them soft corals that ripple in the current like underwater meadows. The reefs shelter over a thousand species of fish, alongside 40 kinds of starfish, 25 of sea u...

Image: Woodym555, edited by Fir0002 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ras Muhammad National Park: Saving a Fragile Edge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mahmoud E. Abd El Aziz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Protection came not a moment too soon. When the Sinai returned to Egyptian control, the reefs faced fishing by dynamite and knife - methods that shattered coral and gutted fish populations. In 1983 the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency declared Ras Muhammad a marine reserve, ...

Image: Mahmoud E. Abd El Aziz | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ras Muhammad National Park: Cracks, Mangroves, and a Restless Crust

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mohamed Nasser Gaafar, CC BY-SA 4.0. The wonders are not all underwater. Ras Muhammad sits at the junction of three tectonic plates - the Arabian, the African, and the Sinai subplate - and the ground bears the marks of their slow grinding. Earthquakes have torn open fissures in the land, one of them around 40 meters...

Image: Mohamed Nasser Gaafar | CC BY-SA 4.0