The Farasan Islands are more than 170 coral reefs lifted above the Red Sea off Jazan in southwestern Saudi Arabia, raised by a salt dome pushing up beneath them into low islands of fossil coral, mangrove lagoons and reef flats, home to an endemic gazelle and to a run of parrotfish each April that the whole town wades out to net, and they are reached by a free ferry from Jazan to a town built of coral blocks and pearl money. The reef flats run so shallow that the wader goes a long way from shore with the seabed glowing underneath before the drop-off, where the coral wall falls away into blue, and some of the sea's densest mangrove stands line the inner channels, followed by boat at high water with their roots gripping the tideline in water the colour of weak tea; only the main crossing has a bridge, and the uninhabited outer islands are reached by hiring a local captain and his fishing boat. The Farasan gazelle lives only here, and it eats the sugary pods of mesquite, the islands' worst invasive tree, planting the seeds wherever it walks.
For a few nights around the full moon from late March to late April the parrotfish, the hareed, gather in the shallows in their thousands to spawn, and the islanders read the run from a scent that drifts ashore after sunset and turn out en masse to net them in a festival. Farasan town's old core is cut from the reef itself, and the pearl money is still on its walls, the Al-Najdi mosque and the house of Al-Rifai wearing gypsum carved into lace with coloured glass throwing patches across painted ceilings, built with pearl money that vanished within a decade. A Latin inscription found here in 2003, cut in 144 AD, records Roman soldiers stationed on the island, a thousand kilometres further south than anyone thought Rome's army had reached. Farasan is a reef that salt lifted out of the sea, and the fish still come to it in April.