Diving in Saudi / Farasan Banks

[EdSen]

Hello there,

I (male) have been to Saudi several times over the past 10 years and did some dives around Jeddah.
While liveaboard in Egypt this year I thought of why never tried to get a liveaboard in Saudi.

I did some research figuring our Dream Divers where I already started a request.
Up to now I did not receive a response.
Also any information I found so far seams to be almost years ago.

From what I read Farasan Banks should be a/the place to go.
I could arrange extra days in Saudi but I am lacking of information of how to go to Farasan.

I appreciate any help as from first thought I really would take the opportunity of beeing one of the lucky ones.

Thanks in advance
Ed

 

[Searcaigh]

I seem to have missed this post.

To be honest I am not sure if Dream Divers are still operating, I have not been to Jeddah in over 18 months and I think at that time Eric who ran Dream Divers was fully booked for trips down to Al Lith and beyond.

I dived Farasan Islands back in 1996, staying on the main island at a camp used by the UN for collection of data on local fauna and flora, with a good friend of mine, who is a marine biologist and had been stationed there for over a year around 1994.

We had use of a small single engined boat and around 10 AL80 tanks that were filled by the coastguard in Jizan on the mainland, as well as 16 tanks that we brought from Jeddah.

Traveling to the main island was via a ferry from Jizan that remarkably ran on time, leaving exactly at 0700, the crew were all Pakistan navy.

Given that Saudi is now very much involved with the conflict over the nearby border with Yemen, there may be some security reasons why nobody is running a dive boat down there at the moment.