Hawksbill sea turtle

Photo: Kevin Bryant · CC BY-NC-SA

Hawksbill turtles forage across Shaab Sharm's outer reef walls with reliable frequency, their narrow rostrum probing sponge-encrusted overhangs to extract their preferred prey. The relative absence of fishing nets and boat traffic across the Fury Shoals makes this reef system a lower-risk environment than many Egyptian inshore sites, and hawksbill numbers reflect this reduced pressure. Individual turtles show strong site fidelity, with liveaboard guides reporting encounters with recognisable individuals across multiple trips per season.