Ras Mohamed lies at the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It is a thin strip of land that juts out from the tip of the peninsula. The terrestrial area is dominated by raised fossil reefs ranging in age from 20 million to 75,000 years. Offshore are the shallow waters (95m) of the Gulf of Suez to the north west and the 1800m deep Gulf of Aqaba to the north-east. Fringing coral reefs encircle most of the site, and in a number of places the reef front is vertical or overhangs for at least 100m. The nearby Tiran Island is dominated by arid mountains, with small areas of salt marsh on the coastline. Fringe reefs also dominate the coastline, with four large patch reefs in the Tiran Straits. Tides and strong currents occur in the 70-1000m wide channels between the reefs and islands.

Ras Mohammed is a rich and vulnerable marine environment, representing one of the few protected coral reefs and mangrove forests in the region.

The make up of Sharm El Sheikh's coastline is quite interesting as although some beaches can be found, the area mainly consists of flat topped cliffs that extend out of the sea. Running parallel to these cliffs along their entire length is a flat narrow stretch of reef, referred to as the reef table. The reef table extends downwards as a fully-fledged wall. This 65km stretch is considered to be one of the richest and most bio diverse reefs in the world.

The west side has two deep fissures in its center and on the southeastern side is a sandy islet called the Mangroves Island from which it is separated by a shallow channel running northwest to southeast, called the Mangroves Canal. To its west is the Gulf of Suez with depths reaching 330 feet or 100 meters and to its east, the Gulf of Aqaba at depths of 6,500 feet or 2,000 meters. The difference is due to the fact that the Gulf of Aqaba is the beginning of an enormous cleavage in the earth’s crust that separated two continental plates, Africa and Eurasia. Only 12 percent of the park is accessible to visitors. No resorts or hotels are built and is renowned for the best diving in the world with many dive sites. One is obliged to explore both sea and land to experience the correspondence between its 5 different eco systems, desert, lagoon, coast, coral and marine. The peninsula itself is constituted by a fossil coral reef that emerged during the Quaternary Period about 75,000 years ago and a result of changes in the coastline caused by variations in sea levels around the planet which were in turn caused by the onset and the end of the great ice ages. A large variety of rock formations distinguish Ras Mohamed. There are formations of sand dunes, soil deposits with runoff from the mountains in the north, limestone, fossil fauna spanning from gastropods to coral, and Magmatic rocks. At Ras Mohamed the Red Sea is split by the granitic peninsula of Sinai into two gulfs; the westernmost, or Gulf of Suez, is now about 180 miles in length, with an average width of about 20 miles. The easternmost, or Gulf of Aqaba, is about 100 miles long from the Straits of Tiran to the Aqaba, and 15 miles wide. The average depth of the Red Sea is from 2500 to 3500 feet though in places it is about 7200 feet deep.

The most important change in the Red Sea has been the drying up of its northern extremity. The land about the head of the gulf has risen and that near the Mediterranean become depressed.It has been proven that at one time the Mediterranean itself was not separated from the Red Sea. Indeed the head of the gulf has consequently retired gradually since the Christian era.

Geologically, from Ras Mohamed one can detect that very ancient pre-Cambrian platform that formed the Afro-Arabian continent has been exposed on either side of the Gulf of Aqaba, though it is exposed over a very much wider area in Africa and Arabia on the two sides of the Red Sea. It is composed of metamorphic rocks, and ancient volcanic material. The Red Sea valley is part of the tectonic rifting which continues north to the Dead Sea, and south through Africa.

High evaporation due to the prevailing dry desert climate and the fact that no Rivers flow in the Red Sea has resulted in unusually high salinity.

It should also be mentioned that the minerals and geochemistry of trace elements and stable oxygen and carbon isotopes for five of the coral reef terraces, or the flat reefs, at Ras Mohamed reveal the presence of three diagenetic stages in relation to the geologic age.The first stage is cement which has no aragonitic skeleton detected in the younger terrace "V" of 4000 B.P. It however has a high concentration of unstable carbonate minerals such as Aragonite and HMC and the associated trace elements (Sr2+, Mg2+). The second stage is marine with cemented aragonitic skeleton detected in terrace "IV" of 125 ka. In this stage, both Aragonite and HMC show different fabrics of cementation in marine phreatic (sub tidal to inter tidal) conditions. The unstable carbonate minerals are still enriched with their associated trace elements. The third stage is meteoric - with cemented calcitic skeleton detected in samples from the other two terraces. In this stage, there are several evidences of meteoric diagenesis including transformation and cementation with the development of different fabrics characteristic for fresh water phreatic and vadose. The unstable carbonate minerals are completely eliminated.In its place, low Mg-calcite (LMC) and dolomite were developed.It is interesting to add that both oxygen and carbon isotopes show values of marine influence in the younger terrace "V" and show progressive enrichement of the negative lighter values with age indicating meteoric diagenesis