Diving in Alanya: What Beginners Should Expect

Diving in Alanya surprises people twice. First because the water is clearer than they expect, often twenty to thirty metres of visibility on a settled day. Then because there is no coral, and the colour they were promised by a brochure of the Red Sea is simply not there.

What is there is topography: rock walls, swim-throughs and caves cut into the base of the peninsula, with Mediterranean life scattered around them. Once you stop looking for the wrong thing, it is very good indeed.

What a first dive for diving in Alanya really involves

Almost everyone starting here books a try dive, sold as a discover or introductory dive. Diving in Alanya is dominated by this one product, and it works the same way at every centre.

You arrive at the harbour in the morning. Paperwork and a medical questionnaire first, then a briefing on land covering equalising, breathing and the two or three hand signals you need. The boat runs out for twenty to forty minutes. In the water an instructor holds you, one to one or one to two, and you descend to somewhere between six and twelve metres for about twenty minutes.

Most packages include two dives with an hour on the boat between them, plus lunch. No licence is needed and no experience is assumed, but you must be able to swim and be reasonably comfortable with your face in the water.

The water, month by month

The sea here runs from around 17 to 18 °C in early spring to 28 °C in late August. That matters more than it sounds.

• June to October: a shorty or a thin wetsuit is plenty. This is the easy season.
• April, May and November: a full 5 mm suit, and you will feel the second dive.
• Winter: centres still run, but for certified divers with proper exposure protection rather than first-timers.

Visibility is best in the morning before the wind picks up, and after a run of calm days. Rain in the mountains can drop it noticeably for a day or two.

What you will actually see

Manage your expectations and you will enjoy it more. Common sightings around Alanya include octopus tucked into holes, moray eels, grouper, bream, wrasse and the occasional ray on sand. The caves are the highlight for most first-timers: a beam of light through a gap in the rock does more than any fish.

The wrecks are further out and generally deeper, which puts them beyond a try dive but well within reach if you go on to certify. Plenty of people start diving in Alanya on holiday and finish an open water course on the next trip.

Choosing a centre for diving in Alanya

Price is a poor way to choose. These are better questions:

• Ratio. How many beginners per instructor in the water? One to two is fine, one to four is not.
• Affiliation. PADI, SSI or CMAS. Any of them is fine; none of them is a bad sign, but no affiliation at all is.
• Equipment age. Look at the regulators and jackets on the deck before you pay.
• Group size on the boat. Twelve people is a different day from thirty.

The beginner scuba diving trip with two dives is the standard product, and comparing two or three operators on the questions above matters far more than comparing their prices.

Safety points people forget

Do not dive with a cold or blocked ears; you will not be able to equalise and it can hurt. Do not drink the night before, tempting as Alanya makes that. And crucially, do not fly within eighteen to twenty-four hours of your last dive, which means no diving on the day before your flight home. Every dive centre will tell you this, and every summer somebody books it anyway.