Euro-Divers in Maldives?

[scc135]

Wife and I want to go on our honeymoon in the Maldives but I still want to get some dives in. Planning to stay at the Lux* South Ari Atoll and they seem to be using the chain Euro-Divers. Anyone have any experience with them or the resort? Seems a bit like a cattle boat...

 

[TabeaK]

Dove with them before, but not in Maldives, in Egypt. Was a good experience. As everywhere it is down to the individual DM/Guide more than the operation. In the Maldives in general, operations tend to be in very good shape as far as the equipment/training of their DMs goes. Diving is pretty high price and it shows. Very safety conscious and they will get you out of the water after 60 mins (National Park rules) and enforce the 30m depth limit.

Do not worry about cattle boats. The Maldives island resorts are generally small, not everyone dives and you are likely to have a max of 10-15 divers on your boat. When I last went to a resort island there, there were never more than 10 divers on the boat per trip and they limited the dive group size to 5 + guide/DM. Which is nice as most of it is drift diving and they usually require to keep the group together - so no swanning of with your buddy.

 

[Imla]

Spent a couple of days with Lux after our LiveAboard had some "errors". Did a couple of dives with Euro-Divers.
You really don't have to worry about "cattle diving" There really aren't that many people diving at the same time there. The Island is small, and consists of mainly newlywed clientele. We got to use our own guides from the live-aboard, but the manager at the time seemed ok. Shop was well run, however the manager said they mostly got to do easy sites as said before, most of the clientele were honeymoon-try-divers, or reasonably unseasoned divers. We still had some really nice dives in the close vicinity though.