Red Sea · Sep 23, 2026

The Sindbad submarine: the Red Sea without getting wet

A real dive to 22 metres, for the people every boat trip leaves behind

There is one question we are asked more than any other about the Red Sea, and it is not about reefs. It is some version of: my mother is seventy-eight, or my son is three, or I have never been able to put my face in the water — is there anything for us? There is, and it is a submarine.

It is a real submarine

Worth saying plainly, because the word gets used loosely. This is not a glass-bottom boat and not a semi-submersible with a viewing hull hanging below the waterline. The Sindbad submarine takes up to forty-four passengers and makes a genuine dive to twenty-two metres. It is the only tourist submarine in the region.

You sit beside a large port with your own window, the hull goes down, and the daylight changes colour above you the way it does for a diver. That is the part nobody expects: not the fish, the light.

Beneath the surface of the Red Sea

Beneath the surface of the Red Sea

What the trip is

About three hours in total, of which the dive itself is the middle section. You are taken out to the submarine by boat, you go down, you come back. It is dry, it is air-conditioned, and nobody needs to change clothes.

On many trips a diver goes down outside the hull and feeds the fish directly in front of the windows — which sounds like a gimmick and is, in practice, the moment children remember. A shoal arriving at your window at twenty metres is not something the sea arranges on request.

How deep twenty-two metres is

It is worth a sentence, because the number means little on its own. Twenty-two metres is roughly a seven-storey building, and it is the limit of ordinary recreational diving on a single tank — deeper than a snorkeller will ever get, and about as deep as most certified divers go.

So the view from the window is not a shallow, watered-down version of diving. It is the same depth band, seen through glass instead of a mask.

Who this is actually for

Non-swimmers. Completely. No water contact at any point.
Grandparents, and anyone for whom a ladder into open water is the end of the conversation.
Small children, who often will not tolerate a mask and will happily sit at a window for half an hour.
Anyone with an ear, sinus or mobility problem that rules out snorkelling. The cabin is at surface pressure; there is no equalising to do.
A very hot afternoon. It is the one Red Sea excursion where being indoors is the point.

The reef the submarine passes

The reef the submarine passes

The honest limits

You are looking through thick glass, from a fixed seat, at whatever the route passes. You cannot follow a fish, you cannot go and look at something, and you cannot stay. Snorkelling over a good reef in a metre of water shows you more detail than this does, and it costs less.

So it is not a substitute for snorkelling for somebody who could snorkel. It is the answer for somebody who cannot, and on that basis it is excellent.

The other limit is light. Twenty-two metres down, red has gone from the spectrum — the coral does not look the way it looks in photographs taken with a flash, and blue dominates. That is honest physics rather than a disappointing day, but it is worth knowing before you go.

Submarine or glass-bottom boat?

They get sold in the same breath and they are not the same purchase.

A glass-bottom boat floats on the surface and you look down through a panel at whatever passes beneath. It is cheap, it is short, it is easy to fit into an afternoon, and on a calm day over a shallow reef it is genuinely good. On a choppy day the surface breaks up the view and you see very little.

A submarine puts you beside the reef rather than above it. You are at the depth the fish are at, looking sideways, and surface chop is irrelevant because you are under it. It costs more and takes longer.

The deciding question is not budget. It is whether anybody in your group would be disappointed by an hour of looking down through a window at a reef several metres below them. If yes, pay the difference.

Seasickness

This is the practical thing people get wrong. The dive itself is the steadiest part of the trip — submerged, there is no swell at all, and passengers who were queasy on the transfer boat usually feel fine the moment the hull goes under.

The boat ride out and back is where the motion is. If you are prone to it, take something before leaving the hotel rather than when you notice it, and you will be fine for the part you paid for.

Practical notes

Bring a jumper. It is air-conditioned and it is a long time sitting still. Children get cold.
Window seats are the whole product — every passenger has one, but sides alternate, so you see whichever side the route favours. Ask the crew which side is better on the day.
Cameras struggle. Through thick glass with low light and reflections, phone photos come out blue and blurred. Put the phone down; you will see more.
Three hours is short. It pairs well with a morning at the hotel and is easy to combine with something else in the same day.

Red Sea coral

Red Sea coral

Why the colours change on the way down

Worth understanding, because it explains both what you see and why the photographs of reefs never look like this.

Water absorbs light unevenly, and it takes the red end of the spectrum first. Red is essentially gone by about five metres, orange not long after, and yellow follows. By twenty-two metres what reaches you is blue and green, so a coral that photographs scarlet with a flash reads as brown or grey through the window.

This is not the submarine's glass and it is not a dull day. It is what divers actually see at that depth, and every vivid reef picture you have ever looked at was lit artificially. Knowing that in advance turns a mild disappointment into the interesting part: you are seeing the reef as it really appears down there.

Fitting it into the week

Three hours is short enough that it is the one Red Sea excursion which does not eat a day, and that changes how you use it.

Pair it with a hotel morning. Breakfast, the pool, out in the early afternoon, back for dinner. Nobody has to get up at six.
Use it on a windy day. When the sea is too rough for a snorkelling boat to be enjoyable, the submarine is the excursion least affected — you spend the interesting part below the swell.
Use it on the hottest afternoon. An air-conditioned cabin in August is not a small thing.
Book it a day or two ahead rather than on the morning. There is one submarine and a fixed number of seats.

Is it worth it

If everybody in your group can and will snorkel, spend the money on a boat day instead — Eden Island or Nemo will give you more sea for the same outlay.

But holidays are rarely made of people with identical abilities. If one person in the party is being left on a sun lounger every time the others go out on a boat, this is the excursion that includes them — and the usual reaction from the person everybody was worried about is that it was the best thing they did.

Book what you just read about

Tours from this article — private, with a licensed guide, and priced per person.