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Scuba diving in the Maldives is nothing short of incredible – divers of all experience levels are able to enjoy interesting reef formations and a huge abundance of marine life, from tiny colourful nudibranchs to whale sharks and mantas. Although house reef diving is great, to get the most out of your diving holiday in the Maldives we recommend you sign up for some boat diving, and with Prodivers it’s easy.

Signing up
Once you’re registered with the dive centre, you can use the Prodivers app, or the tablets at the dive centre to sign up for the boat diving activities. Guests at Hurawalhi and Kudadoo can ask the dive centre and butlers to organise the diving for them. The friendly teams at our dive centres are always around and happy to help if you would like to ask any questions or need advice about signing up.

On the day of your dive
Meet at the dive centre 10 minutes before the trip starts – this is time to chat with other divers and to organise your gear unless the team are doing it for you – they will let you know what you need to do. We all walk down to the boat together and then assemble or check the dive gear and analyse your tank if diving with nitrox. Your instructor will give you a quick introduction to the boat to let you know where to find things such as water for cleaning your mask, the toilet, emergency equipment etc. We announce the dive site and then we set off for our adventure.

At the dive site
Once at the site, currents and visibility are checked and the guide does the final briefing of the dive site which will include points of interest, any hazards to be aware of, maximum depth, dive time, which direction to dive in etc. As a general rule the maximum depth is 30 metres and maximum dive time is 60 minutes including the safety stop which should be 3 minutes at 5 metres. All dives are no decompression dives and everyone must stay with their buddy.

Let’s dive!
When everybody is ready, enter water, move away from the boat and descend to 5-10 metres; do not wait for your buddy at the surface as you can drift away. Underwater, find your buddy and signal to the instructor that everything is ok. During the dive, stay with your buddy. Do your safety stop when you or your buddy reach 50bars or at 55 minutes. Ascend together and wait 3 minutes at 5 metres close to the reef. At the end of your dive, once at the surface swim away from the reef to enable the boat pick to you up easily and signal the boat with a ‘big okay’ or, id it’s further away, your surface marker buoy. Leave space at the bottom of the ladder if someone is already climbing it.

Back on the boat
Once back on board, sit down in your seat, remove equipment and put on the floor, either dismantle it or change the tank if doing another dive. For your comfort, here is a marine toilet and freshwater shower on board. Look out for dolphins while you enjoy light refreshments during the journey back to the resort. As a courtesy to others on the boat, smoking is only permitted towards the back of the boat.

Back on dry land
Once the boat has docked, applaud and thank the crew before heading back to the dive centre to wash and store or return equipment and fill in log books.

We hope you will enjoy lots of incredible dives with us, there’s so much to see and so little time so don’t delay, start your diving as soon as you can!

Insider knowledge – the Dhivehi word for the traditional style boat in the Maldives is ‘dhoni’.