Your first breath underwater, or your hundredth dive.
Which Red Sea boat day gives you two real dives for the price of lunch. What a try dive off Oahu costs with the video. Whether Silfra is worth the drysuit. Reviews of the scuba dives you can book, from Cairns to Cozumel.
The reef off Cairns, a crack in Iceland, sharks off Oahu, the Red Sea.
Four scuba days that people plan whole holidays around. What each costs to book, and who it suits.
01The big reefGreat Barrier Reef Snorkeling and Diving Cruise from CairnsTwo outer-reef sites off Cairns and about five hours in the water. Snorkel, or add an introductory dive.
02The cold oneSilfra: Diving Between Tectonic Plates – Meet on LocationA drysuit dive through the Silfra fissure in groups of three. You need a drysuit certificate and recent dives.
03The teethOahu Shark DiveGalapagos and sandbar sharks from a cage in open Pacific water, out of Haleiwa on the North Shore.
04The cheap oneIntro Diving 2 Stops For Beginners with Pick-up and Lunch – HurghadaTwo beginner dives from a Hurghada boat with lunch and pickup, for less than a dinner out.
Never dived? A scuba try dive takes one morning and no certificate.
An instructor briefs you on the boat or the beach, you practise in the shallows, then go down to around twelve metres holding onto someone who does this every day. If you like it, the Open Water course turns the same morning into a licence in three or four days.
Scuba diving in Spain: the Canaries carry it, the Mediterranean keeps up.
Turtles and black volcanic sand off Tenerife, lava arches round Lanzarote, warm-water sites year round. Then the Med: the Costa Brava coves and the Mallorca reefs from May to October. Where each one fits, and what the dive costs.
Five facts that decide which dive you can book.
Scuba diving is a booking with conditions attached. Get these right and you will not be the person turned away on the jetty.
- 01Dive early in the trip.Most training agencies ask for 18 hours on the ground after repeat dives before you fly, and 24 is the safe habit. Put the scuba early and snorkel on the last day.
- 02A try dive needs no card, but it does need a form.You sign a medical questionnaire. Asthma, heart trouble or recent ear surgery mean a doctor’s note first. Most centres take children from 10.
- 03Certified dives ask to see the card.Bring your certification and logbook. If your last dive was more than a year ago, expect to be offered a refresher in the shallows first.
- 04The Open Water course takes three or four days.Do the theory online before you leave and the holiday days go on the confined water and the four open-water dives.
- 05Cannot swim? You can still go under.Helmet dives and sea walks pump air into a helmet that keeps your head dry. No training, no certificate, just a walk on the sea floor.
The scuba dives booked most, on every ocean.
Every dive on the site →The diving days more people take than any others, and what earns each one its place.
1
First-Time Scuba Diving in Honolulu + Free Videos
Meet your instructor at Magic Island Lagoon for a beginner-friendly scuba lesson in waist-deep water, followed by a guided swim to about 15 feet. Alex, Nick, Danny, Dan, and Rida are among the instructors praised for calm guidance. Gear, safety instruction, and underwater videos are included.
From · $89
Read our review →
2
Ocean Freedom Great Barrier Reef Luxury Snorkel and Dive Cruise
from $181
3
Beginner Scuba Diving with Turtles and Videos, San Juan
from $109
4
Tenerife: Your First Scuba Diving Experience in Turtle Area
from $84
5
Discover Scuba Diving
from $127
6
Cairns: Premium Snorkelling and Diving Reef Day Trip
from $166
7
Oahu: Shark Cage Dive on the North Shore
from $99
8
Cairns: Outer and Coral Cay Snorkel and Dive Cruise
from $183
Three dives you cannot do on any ordinary reef.
Coral and fish are everywhere warm. A fissure between two continents, a flooded cave lit from above and a gallery of statues on the sea floor are not.
Silfra, between the plates
In Thingvellir the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart a couple of centimetres a year, and the crack fills with glacier meltwater filtered through lava rock for decades. It stays around two to four degrees, so you dive in a drysuit, and on a still day you can see past a hundred metres.
- 1Silfra: Diving Between Tectonic Plates – Meet on Location★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,139 reviews
- 2Silfra: Diving Between Tectonic Plates and Pick Up from Reykjavik★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 590 reviews
- 3Freedive Silfra Half Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 225 reviews
The cenotes
The Yucatan sits on limestone full of flooded caves, and the sinkholes where the roof fell in are the cenotes. Sunlight comes down in shafts through the water, and in some of them fresh water sits on salt so the view blurs at the line between. Cavern dives stay within reach of daylight; most ask for an Open Water card, and a few take beginners in the open pools.
- 1Scuba Diving in Cenote Dos Ojos from Playa del Carmen★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 453 reviews
- 2Scuba Diving in Cenote Kukulkan from Playa del Carmen★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 370 reviews
- 32 dives in Cenote Dos ojos Certified Divers★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 227 reviews
Underwater museums
Off Cancun, Lanzarote, Ayia Napa and Side, hundreds of concrete figures sit on the sea floor as an artificial reef. Coral and sponges grow over them a little more each year, which is the point. Most are shallow enough to visit on a first dive or even with a snorkel.
- 1Side: Scuba Diving, Underwater Museum, 2 Dives incl. Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 146 reviews
- 2City of Side: Underwater Museum Scuba Diving Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 111 reviews
- 3Scuba diving at MUSA the underwater museum for certified divers★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 102 reviews
Diving with sharks, mantas and turtles: book the animal, not just the reef.
Cage dives with great whites off Gansbaai, Galapagos sharks off the North Shore of Oahu, mantas at the cleaning station off Nusa Penida, turtles grazing off Tenerife. The encounters people fly for, ranked.
What a day of scuba diving costs, from the Red Sea to Hawaii.
Every dive on the site, grouped by price. Egypt and Turkey sell two-dive boat days for the price of a pizza; Hawaii and the outer reef charge for the boat ride.
Red Sea and Turkish boat days with lunch, shore dives and the cheaper try dives.
Try dives with video, two-tank days for certified divers and most cenote trips.
Outer-reef cruises, shark cages, Silfra in a drysuit and the full Open Water course.
Six dive countries, from Red Sea reefs to the Pacific.
Warm water, cheap boats, big animals or the coral everyone has heard of. Where to go for each, and the best dive in every one.
By place: where the water is
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