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50 free Red Sea trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Red Sea trivia quiz covers the long, narrow inlet of the Indian Ocean that separates Africa from Arabia. The easy questions cover the basics: which continents it divides, the canal at its northern end, the countries on its shores and the famous Bible story set there. The middle of the quiz moves into the geography and science: the two gulfs that flank Sinai, the strait that lets water in from the Gulf of Aden, why the water is so salty and warm, the rift that is slowly widening it into an ocean, and the coral reefs that make it one of the world's great diving destinations. The hard questions go to the ancient Egyptian voyages to Punt, Darius's canal, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Raynald of Chatillon's raid, the hot brine pools on the seabed, volcanic islands that appeared in the 2010s, the sunken SS Thistlegorm and the numbers on how much world trade transits the sea. Expect a genuine mix of geography, history and marine biology. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the sea, the Suez Canal, the Bab-el-Mandeb and the Thistlegorm before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our oceans and Egypt quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Red Sea separates Africa from which landmass?
Arabia
It is technically an inlet of a larger ocean, reached through a narrow strait and the Gulf of Aden at its southern end.
Q 02The Red Sea is an inlet of which larger body of water?
Indian Ocean
Its only natural opening to the ocean is at the southern end; the northern link to the Mediterranean is man-made.
Q 03Which peninsula sits between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba at the top of the Red Sea?
Sinai
Egyptian resorts on the peninsula's coast are the heart of what is marketed as the Red Sea Riviera.
Q 04What is the name of the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea?
Bab-el-Mandeb
Its Arabic name is usually translated as the Gate of Grief or Gate of Tears, a nod to its dangerous navigation.
Q 05How many countries border the Red Sea proper (excluding the two northern gulfs)?
Six
Two of them line the eastern shore and four the western shore.
Q 06Which of these countries has a coastline on the Red Sea?
Sudan
Ethiopia lost its Red Sea coast when Eritrea became independent in 1993.
Q 07Which country entirely borders the Gulf of Suez?
Egypt
The Gulf of Aqaba, by contrast, is shared by four countries.
Q 08Which Israeli city sits at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba?
Eilat
It sits within sight of Jordan's Aqaba, an Egyptian resort and a Saudi town across the gulf.
Q 09The English name Red Sea is a direct translation from which language?
Greek
Europeans once called it the Erythraean Sea from the same Greek root; the Romans also called it the Sea of Hercules.
Q 10Seasonal blooms of which kind of organism are one suggested origin of the Red Sea's name?
A cyanobacterium
Trichodesmium erythraeum turns the surface reddish; another theory says red simply meant south in ancient direction-colour systems.
Q 11What is the Biblical Hebrew name for the sea, translated as 'Sea of Reeds'?
Yam Suph
Rabbi Saadia Gaon identified the crossing place with the Gulf of Suez.
Q 12Which book of the Bible tells of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea?
Exodus
The Hebrew text uses a name traditionally translated as Sea of Reeds, which was long identified with this sea.
Q 13Roughly how long is the Red Sea?
2,250 km
At its widest it is only about 355 km across, which is what makes it such a distinctive stripe on the map.
Q 14What is the maximum depth of the Red Sea, reached in the central Suakin Trough?
Q 21Which volcanic island in the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea erupted violently in 2007?
Jabal al-Tair
Two brand-new islands, Sholan and Jadid, then emerged from eruptions in the Zubair Archipelago in 2011 and 2013.
Q 22Which country owns the Zubair Archipelago, where two new volcanic islands appeared in 2011 and 2013?
Yemen
Sholan Island appeared in December 2011 and Jadid in September 2013.
Q 23Roughly how many fish species have been recorded in the Red Sea?
Over 1,200
About ten percent of them are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.
2,730 m
Despite that trench, about 40 percent of the sea is less than 100 metres deep.
Q 15The Red Sea holds which global distinction among tropical seas?
The northernmost
It has also been designated a Global 200 ecoregion for its reef life.
Q 16What is the average salinity of the Red Sea, in parts per thousand (the world ocean averages about 35)?
40
No significant rivers drain into it, evaporation is huge and its opening to the ocean is narrow.
Q 17About how much rain falls over the Red Sea and its coasts each year on average?
60 mm
Evaporation, meanwhile, can run as high as 2,050 mm a year, which is why the water gets saltier and saltier.
Q 18The Red Sea was formed by which tectonic process?
Rifting apart of two plates
The rift is part of the Great Rift Valley system, and geologists expect the sea to become an ocean in time.
Q 19After three weeks of tectonic activity in 2005, by roughly how much had the Red Sea widened?
8 m
The rift is still active, and the model of John Tuzo Wilson predicts the sea will one day be an ocean.
Q 20What did a 1949 deep-water survey discover in the central Red Sea?
Anomalously hot brines
Later work found brines at 60 degrees Celsius with metal-rich muds welling up from the rift.
Q 24How long is the fringing coral reef along the Red Sea coastline?
About 2,000 km
These reefs are 5,000 to 7,000 years old and built mostly of stony acropora and porite corals.
Q 25How many species of shark have been recorded in the Red Sea?
44
They range from whale sharks and hammerheads to the exceptionally rare great white.
Q 26Which park, established by Egypt in 1983, was the first marine protected area in Africa and the Middle East?
Ras Mohammed
The IUCN lists it among the world's top ten sites for effective management of marine ecosystems.
Q 27The migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean began after which event?
The opening of the Suez Canal
More than a thousand species have moved north since the canal opened, and the shift is accelerating.
Q 28In which year did the Suez Canal open?
1869
A French diplomat formed the company in 1858 and construction took a decade.
Q 29Which French diplomat formed the company that built the Suez Canal?
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Lepere, an engineer on Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, had earlier revived the ancient idea of a canal.
Q 30Which Egyptian leader nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, triggering the Suez Crisis?
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Until then British and French shareholders had owned the operating company.