Mpang,
To answer one of your questions very directly, I don’t know of a day trip operator out of Yanbu.
I’m going to give you more information than you asked for so that you have a flavor of diving in Saudi Arabia and for the sake of others that may research diving there.
If you live in Saudi Arabia, the diving can be fantastic. Visiting and trying to hit the jackpot are very difficult. You’ll need to do a lot of research to get comfortable.
Enough preface and on with the novel....
The main LOB operation out of Yanbu, Jeddah and Al Lith is
www.dreamdiver.net. They have two M/Vs with a 25-berth capacity (not including crew). Their third M/V is a bit smaller with a 20-berth capacity. I think one of the large M/Vs is in maintenance as of the time of this post.
Will is the DM/DG for Dream Diver and is a great guy....he’s been diving the sites for nearly 10 years. Iona Wreck is the main wreck out of Yanbu....nice but nothing mind-blowing. Marker 32, Marker 34, Marker 39 and Abu Ghalawa Reef are the main attractions. Coral is great up there but there aren’t as many pelagics as there are further south down the coastline.
Jeddah is good for day trips. Lots of recreational dive sites there.
www.desertseadivers.com
is the most reliable day trip outfit there and the one most expats choose. Juletto (humorously goes by “Julie”) is the skipper of their better boat (#5). He’s been working the dive sites for about 30 years and is very customer focused. He’ll reliably switch to great alternate sites if the seas pick up making anchoring at the primary site difficult. He’s trustworthy to keep the customer’s interests in mind (while also keeping the boat upright). Very good guy and earns his tips.
www.dreamdiver.net has a day boat that operates out of Jeddah but I haven’t taken it so can’t comment on the skipper or vessel.
www.natlusdivers.com is a dive shop and has a Newton 36 for day trips on the weekends out of Jeddah. Hashem is the DM/DG and Mazem, Jr is his AI. They’re good guys but still young...their enthusiasm sometimes overpowers their experience and organizational skills. They know I’m a technical diver and really encouraged me to go with them one time talking up how fantastic the diving was going to be. It ended being a DSD day for a bunch of elementary school kids. Of course, I switched gears, got into the spirit of things and helped out but I was expecting adult depths and dive buddies. They’ll get you out on the water but don’t expect it to be up to Western standards. This is not peculiar to Natlus....you can expect that sort of unpredictable mismatch in expectations from other operators. You’ll want to make sure to clarify your expectations with whatever business you engage with and be prepared to settle for less than what you may be accustomed.
Al Lith is great. I’ve done five LOBs from there with
www.dreamdiver.net. Marmar Island, Malathu Island, Dohra Island, Jadir Island and Gorgona Reef are all good sites. Some big wall dives and much better chance of seeing pelagic sealife. I was just there a few weeks back and saw hammerheads and white tips. Plenty of wrasses, turtles, rays and all the little guys, too. There are always some Turkish macro junkies on board with crazy camera rigs that squeal when they get back on the boat so that must be good, too.
There are other vessels you can hire for the day at all three locations (Yanbu, Jeddah and Al Lith) but it’s a web that requires sustained presence to penetrate to find the right skipper and vessel. It’s not that people don’t want to help, just that pursuing opportunity for profit and meeting customer expectation don’t hold the attention of Saudis and their Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Philippino employees like in other parts of the world. So, for Yanbu particularly, it’s going to be a matter of calling around and finding an operator that 1) will meet your expectations which you will need to clearly communicate and 2) will be attracting enough divers on board to bring the costs down. I would not encourage you to simply fly into Yanbu and expect to easily find a jackpot center like you can with Egypt. For reinforcement, a British husband and wife team who have habitually organized the LOBs, both very experienced divers and instructors, have had trouble finding a dive-friendly vessel that can safely and reliably get us out for day trips to common Jeddah sites. Like I wrote earlier, the available businesses are scant but also a dense web hard to penetrate.
Since the roll out of the new Saudi tourist visa, a German and an Italian company (don’t have names) have booked
www.dreamdiver.net for three months at a time in 2020 and have nearly gobbled up the whole year. Those companies are intending to fill the LOB vessels every weekend with DEU, ITA and other EU customers. That has set the local expat divers back a bit since we’ve been accustomed to scheduling LOBs without having to compete. The price has correspondingly gone up to EU standards, too. Most LOBs on the Saudi Red Sea have been about 1500 Saudi Riyals (SAR) but the DEU and ITA companies are charging 2000 SAR. Not the end of the world but somewhat of a bummer that our LOB opportunities are being pulled out from underneath us a bit. It seems now to get on the boat, we have to go through the DEU or ITA company which rankles.
www.dreamdiver.net has things pretty well dialed in for their LOBs but for everybody else doing day trips the real fly in the ointment is getting past the Ministry of Interior Border Guard (Coast Guard). It is, shall we say euphemistically, an adventure. Unpredictably fickle, capricious, whimsical, superficial and officious application of authority for the sake of feeling powerful or perhaps quietly thumbing one’s nose at Westerners are all suitable descriptions.
Many of us anticipate the MoI’s business practices will undermine Saudi efforts to modernize and grow their tourism industry. I hope not but it’s something all the Western consulates in Jeddah talk about and attempt to assist the Saudi government to overcome. The problem and solution are relatively simple — the recreational businesses should gather together, approach the Ministry of Tourism with a coherent set of observations and lost profits, get the Ministry of Tourism to approach the Ministry of Interior and negotiate a better method to allow tourism to grow without compromising enforcement of the law. Simple doesn’t equate to easy and the approach I’ve laid out is just more work than what Saudis are willing to put into it. So we limp along with boarding the vessel, kitting up and waiting at the marina not knowing whether we’ll get permission from the Border Guard to go out for the day or not. Our outlook is underpinned by dozens and dozens of cancelled efforts, most of the time without clear explanation. It is going to be an interesting inflection point when the hordes (maybe) of tourist divers descend upon the Saudi coast and their expectations of punctuality and efficiency crash on the rocky Saudi breakers of opaque and bureaucratic business practices.
Nevermind the abayas and hijabs - an annoyance for Western women for certain but not nearly as annoying as flying in all the way from the EU only to have one’s day trip cancelled by a Saudi kid in uniform with the power to say “No” and not have to explain it to anybody.
On certain occasions, the clarity of one’s cancelled trip will be crystal. When anyone from the Royal family is out on the water, you’ll know it. The flotilla of Apache gunships hovering motionless overhead at the most incredibly inefficient flight profile along with armed surface escort accompanying the yacht is hard to miss. The coastline gets shut down for the day.
There are “resorts” to choose from but I’m hard-pressed to say they merit a dedicated trip unless the diving is just one activity on a list of other activities you intend to accomplish while in Saudi Arabia.
Best of luck. Let us know how you get along.
