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All 88 resorts in the
Maldives have dive schools on them. Of course the facilities,
equipment and the staff differ from resort to resort, depending on its
size, its location and clientele. However all the resorts offer
beginners’ dive courses and a variety of other courses towards PADI
certification. In almost all the resorts instruction is available in
English and German, however many resorts offer instruction in Italian,
French, Japanese and a host of other European languages too. While
some dive schools are Instructor Development Centers (IDCs), others
too offer a wide variety of advanced and specialized dive courses.
It is advisable to check up on the languages of instruction and
courses available, before you book at a resort for your diving
holiday. Equipment wise, all have the basics - compressors, tanks,
BCDs, wetsuits, weights and weight belts and can provide a limited
number of other accessories such as lamps and dive computers. Only
some dive schools rent out underwater cameras and video cameras. Dive
schools at all the resorts conduct daily dive boat trips to dive sites
around the island, throughout the year.
However, bigger schools offer a variety of trips everyday to different
dive sites. In these resorts, the advanced diver would have choice of
dives daily, to choose from. Night dives and other specialized dives
are not conducted on a daily basis at all the resorts. However on the
more specialized dive resorts, these too are available. The same goes
for night diving in the resort’s house reef. The dive schools in all
the resorts invariably consist of one or more classrooms -
air-conditioned at some, wet room and storage space for the school’s
as well as private equipment. Some of the bigger schools also have
dive shops and video processing facilities. |
Dive School
Information provided by Maldives Tourism Promotion Board,
Ministry of Tourism, Republic of Maldives.
