Looking for recommendations for the best dive shops and dive locations in South Australia (Adelaide). I am traveling there for the last week of November for the first time and I would appreciate anyone that might be able to recommend a couple of dive shops for reef and/or shark dives. Thank you.
Hi
paulmaggard
I live in South Australia. I apologise for not responding earlier as I do not visit Scubaboard much at all in recent times because I find always that it is temporarily unavailable.
As it would appear that you will be here for reasons other than diving and that you will not be here for a lengthy period of time, I would therefore suggest what can be done and rather than recommending a couple of dive shops
I assume that you have some knowledge of the basic geography of South Australia. If not, please have a look online to inform yourself. Most of the organised diving is offered in waters on the east coast of Gulf St Vincent next to the Adelaide metropolitan area where most of the states population lives. Popular sites include Port Noarlunga, Second Valley, Rapid Bay and the decommissioned RAN ship (i.e. Ex-HMAS Hobart) which was scuttled to the north of Rapid Bay. The main environmental factor controlling diving is wind direction.
There are six main dive stores (listed alphabetically) Adelaide Scuba, Diving Adelaide, Divers Delight, Underwater Sports Diving Centre, Snorkel Safari and Divers Service. Other service providers include three stores that specialised in equipment servicing and underwater photography, and a number of smaller part-time businesses offering services such as training (i.e. photography and technical diving) and guided tours. Links to the websites for the above stores can be found at
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Diving_in_South_Australia - please scroll down to the heading entitled Service details at the bottom of the page.
I would suggest that you could consider doing one or a number of one day outings such as the following:
- Boat dives on the Adelaide coastline at sites such as Seacliffe Reef, The Dredge, The Barge or Broken Bottom. Charters for these are usually offered by Adelaide Scuba, Divers Delight and Snorkel Safari.
- Port Noarlunga - ask the following stores if they can offer a package consisted of equipment hire and a guided tour - Adelaide Scuba, Diving Adelaide and Divers Delight. This option would probably be only possible during weekdays only and could consist of one dive if desired.
- Leafy seadragon tour to Rapid Bay - all stores offer these. An alternative site that also offered is the Bluff at Victor Harbor - this is not as scenic as Rapid Bay and is also much smaller.
- Ex-HMAS Hobart/Rapid Bay boat diving package - try Underwater Sports Diving Centre or possibly Snorkel Safari. A quick look at calendars available as of today on two store websites suggest that the weekend of 21 and 22 November will have suitable tides for Ex-HMAS Hobart dives.
You mentioned shark dives in your post. I assume you are talking about cage dives with great white sharks. These are only available at the Neptune Islands which is about 230 km west of the Adelaide CBD. There are three licensed charter operators based in Port Lincoln of which two offer day trips. In a nutshell, a day trip consists of a 45 minute dive standing in a cage in water no deeper than two metres and breathing surface-supplied air. The most efficient way (and the probably cheapest way) of doing a day trip is to fly to Port Lincoln (45 minute flight) on the evening before the charter in order to be ready to board the charter vessel very early the next morning. This will require two nights accommodation in Port Lincoln as the charters usually arrive back too late in the evening in order to be able to board the evening flight to Adelaide. The likely cost is somewhere between $1200 and $1500 per person.
I notice DiveOz hasn't been very active so I figured I should probably put in some more effort here 
