Saturday, May 23, 2009

Turkey Welcomes Scuba Divers

If Turkey isn't on your dive destination list... why not?

Known for its cultural and historical heritage, Turkey is also full of prime diving spots, with the Antalya, Balıkesir, Çanakkale, Mersin and Muğla coasts topping divers’ lists, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Sunken ships and underwater caves are highlights for divers in Turkey. Those at every experience level can explore the submerged vessel Paris, which lies on the seabed 33 meters off the Kemer Marina.

Antalya’s popular beaches of Lara and Konyaaltı offer convenient diving from land. The Gök Cave in Finike is among the deepest caves that can be dived in Asia and contains large halls and stalactites.

Ayvalık, the purported location of the fabled city of Atlantis, also presents unique diving opportunities, including the opportunity to see red corals. Güneş Island, Yuvarlak Island and the Kerbela Rocks are among the area’s important diving centers.

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Anyone dove Turkey?

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2 comments:

Absolutmark said...

My wife and I dived Fethiye in Turkey in 2005 with the European Diving Centre and they were a top notch operation. The dive guides were excellent and really knew their stuff.
It was one of the few places I've dived in the world where they wanted to check through your log book to see what training we'd done, how many and what dives we'd done (depths and durations) and what we felt comfortable with.
Sadly the undersea world was a bit of a disappointment.
Don't get me wrong, being underwater any time is better than being on the surface but looking back through my log-book on the six or so dives we did, we were left with the feeling the area had been overfished in the past.
There was still a fair bit to see but it wasn't teeming with fish-life like we hoped. That said, if you poked around there was some nice little bits (starfish etc).
Also note that some of the cavern dives like Aladdins Cave we did were advanced (25-30M region) and the EDC were (rightly) adamant that they would not take OW divers with them.
But that meant on both days boat diving we did a couple of divers had to sit out one of the three dives.
My advice is to check the itinerary with EDC first so you are not paying to sit on the boat for part of the time while others are in the water.
Because the dive centre and staff were so professional the diving was nice and relaxed and it should prove to be good experience for you. Hope you have a good time.

Neutral Dive Gear said...

Terrific insight, Absolutmark. Tanks for sharing!!!

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