Diving safety: professional risk management, not promises

Before the boat leaves

Safety begins with honesty at the booking stage. We ask beginners to tell us about any medical condition, and certified divers to describe their certification and how recently they last dived. The answers change how the day is planned: a diver returning after years gets a conservative first profile; a guest with a condition on our list is told, before paying anything, that diving is not suitable.

Each morning the dive team assesses the weather and the sea state before choosing where the boat goes. The site that suits the group and the conditions is the site we dive. If the conditions do not allow safe diving at all, the day is moved or cancelled free of charge — a decision the team makes without pressure from a sales target.

The pre-dive briefing

Nobody enters the water without a briefing. For beginners it covers how to breathe through a regulator, how to equalise your ears on the way down, the hand signals you will use with your instructor, what the dive will look like and what to do if anything feels wrong. For certified divers it covers the site, the maximum depth and time, the route, buddy procedures, the emergency procedures for that dive and the surface routine.

Equipment checks

Your equipment is fitted to you on the boat — mask seal, fin straps, wetsuit size, weights for your body and suit — and checked with the instructor before you descend: air on, regulator breathing, BCD inflating and deflating, releases known. It is checked again in the water before the descent begins. Certified divers run a buddy check the way they were trained.

Supervision in the water

Beginners dive beside a professional PADI-certified instructor throughout both dives, in small groups of 3–4 divers per instructor, in open water. The instructor controls buoyancy and depth; the diver breathes, looks and signals.

Certified divers dive with a professional dive guide who leads the dive, and with a buddy. Buddy procedures apply from the surface check to the final ascent.

Conservative profiles

A beginner's first dive is 5–8 m for 15–25 minutes; the second goes to about 13 m and no deeper. Certified divers dive profiles matched to their certification, their logged experience and the day's conditions — around 30 m on standard dives, with the deep sites to 60 m reserved for suitably qualified divers by agreement with the team. Descents and ascents are controlled, and a safety stop is part of every certified profile.

Overhead environments — passing beyond the daylight zone into a cave — are never part of a beginner dive and never part of a standard certified dive. Caves and overhangs are seen from the outside, in open water.

Emergency procedures

The briefing for every dive includes the emergency procedures for that dive: what to do if you feel uncomfortable, if you lose your buddy or instructor, if you run low on air, and how a controlled ascent and the surface routine work. The instructor stays with the group and the boat crew stays with the divers throughout the dive. Diving insurance for the day is included in the price.

If you become uncomfortable underwater, you signal and the dive ends calmly. This is not a failure — it is exactly what the signals are for.

Rules we do not bend

• Minimum age 14 on the boat.
• No diving during pregnancy, or with heart conditions or serious respiratory conditions including severe asthma.
• No alcohol before diving.
• No flying within 24 hours after your last dive.
• The instructor's or guide's decision on depth, site and whether a dive goes ahead is final.

Responsible diving

The reef, the caves and the amphora site are shared with everything that lives there. We ask every diver to control their buoyancy, keep hands and fins off the rock and the jars, take nothing from the seabed and never chase or corner an animal. A calm diver sees more; a respectful diver leaves the site as they found it.

Questions about a specific condition or your own experience? Ask the team before you book — an honest answer costs nothing.