This is by far the best dive spot I've visited on the East coast of the UAE. I came here twice with Al Boom diving (operating out of the Le Meridien Hotel Al Aqa Beach Resort). It's a submerged, rocky "mini seamount" near Shark Island and Khor Fakkan harbour. The top is about 10 feet below the surface and the base meets sand at around 60 feet. Visibility was around 20-30 feet. Most of the rock is covered with red soft coral, colourful feather stars, green "black coral" and several other types of soft coral and sea fans. Lion fish are very common here. They're often even clustered in groups on the rock face. Of course there are all kinds of other fish milling about (Moorish idols, box fish, damsel fish, etc.). The dive guides that accompanied the small groups of divers tended to keep divers at the base of the rock, pointing out the creatures living on the sand (tiny octopus, cuttle fish, stone fish, gobies, a big sting ray, etc.), but I much preferred to hang around about half-way up. Here there are canyons cutting up through the rock covered with those soft corals and swarming with colourful fish. There were several moray eels here, and when I looked up I could see huge schools of fish and the silhouettes of turtles above me. Compared to other local dives I've done, Martini Rock's colourful soft corals are quite a surprise.
