Seeking information on Socotra, Yemen

[Dubai Diver]

Hello all,

Does anyone know anything about diving off the island of Socotra in Yemen ? I have only managed to find scattered bits of information about and woud like to hear from someone who has been.

I have a feeling that it is good.. Why not ? It is bang in the middle of nothing where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean..there has to be something there....

 

[kruz]

One member of croatian diving forum (www.adriaticdiving.com) is currently on Socotra for scuba diving so when he got back i will ask his for informations about it and will post here

 

[Adnan Yemen]

Because the island is affected badly during the mansoon, the best months to visit is between October til March. There is a diving operation running during those months based approx 30km west of the airport. The setup is simple but the location is great and island itself is wonderfull. You can easily spend one week exploring the island's caves, spring water pools & water falls and dive sites. You can use the existing camping facilities at minimal charge or bring your own camping gear. I will try to get the dive operators contacts and post it soon.

 

[Rembert]

Hello Dubai Diver,
certain projects are in the pipe and I am waiting patiently for the announcement of a touchable result for a new dive facility on Socotra island. One project is financed by UNDP and the Italian Government. They show on their website http://www.socotraisland.org, that a kind of eco-tourism with diving is planned -- but when?
The other is a more commercial and may be more efficient announcement in the Yemen Observer newspaper

QUOTE
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Diving Tourism Centre in Socotra Marine Reserve
By Observer Staff
May 20, 2006 -
SANA’A – The island of Socotra is preparing to receive new groups of tourists from Germany and other European countries in the coming weeks.

A local source said that groups are visiting following a promotional campaign launched by an Austrian investor in Europe.
He plans to establish an environmental dive centre in the unique marine protectorate of Thee Humar, one of the natural protectorates of the remote island off Yemen’s southern coast.
The source said that the Austrian investor had signed an agreement with the association to preserving and developing the protectorate of Thee Humar.

He will help with international promotion of dive centre and the protectorate, as well as helping to improve the skills of the association members.
This will include training local workers in skills needed for the dive centre, as well as helping them to learn more about tourism. He will also work to encourage environmental tourism by attracting interested tourists to the beautiful area.

The Austrian investor is considered to be one of the biggest investors in diving, the source added. He has bought “many investments in Europe” and diving centres in the Maldives and Egypt.
He has already brought groups tourists to the protectorate in the last three months, and has coordinated with tourism and travel agencies in Sana’a. A group of tourism associations are being trained with some citizens from the protectorate.

The protectorate of Thee Humar is located in the north-east of the island and received official protection by a government decree in 2000.
It has more than 80 different kinds of coral reefs, and many types of fish breed there. It has two locations for diving, one with Scuba oxygen tanks and another one for snorkelling.

In order to protect and preserve this precious and fragile are, the association of preserving and developing the protectorate of Thee Humar was founded for maintaining it from any misuse.

UNQUOTE
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Unfortunately I never read a follow-up from this Austrian Dive Operator. Can be, that we have to wait until the end of procedure inside the local administration.
Ciao

 

[kruz]

So.....my "friend" wrote me email with few words about diving on Socotra. Season lasts till may when SW(?) monsoon starts. Viz was not so good when he compare it to Red Sea. Sea temp in january was about 22-23°C. On most dives they saw bih schools of jacks,sharks,mooray eels,lobsters and deeper the bigger fish...Excellent dives he said.
He works in diving centre in Dahab and his boss (some russian guy) is planning to open diving center on Socotra soon (and i will post here when it will be).

 

[poleinahole]

I'm just back from two weeks diving in Yemen--one week on Socotra ans one in Al Mukalla, so hopefully this will be helpful to you:

SOCOTRA:
I spent a week diving here. I was based in the capital, a small town called Hadibo and stayed at the Taj Socotra Hotel—more of a guest house than a hotel but as good as it gets on Socotra.

The dive center was based at the Tent Camp Dihamri, an hour’s drive from Hadibo. (Transfer to and from $50 a day per vehicle w. driver). The camp belongs to a local village and is expensive for what you get, especially food which costs 1,000 Rials no matter what you order, 30% more than what you pay in town. There is a fresh water shower and squat toilet, which is cleaned every day or two. Most of the tents are small pup tents. There used to three deluxe tents which are large enough you could stand up in, but there is only one left—the conservation group insisted the tents be moved to areas where they got blown off by the wind or by rainwater because the tent is in a Natural Park.

Conservation has gone awry here and has resulted in the German run Dihamri Dive Center closing operations mid February 2007. Only 5 divers are allowed on a reef (reef means a huge area) at one time and can only dive with a local guide. So if you are a group of 4 and are joined by a couple, one person can’t dive. By law, they must charge a fixed $20 a day per group of 5 and are only open water divers with 25 dives under their belt, but even if they have trouble clearing their ears, and stay on the surface, you have to pay. Then you have to pay $10 a day (per group of 5) to the local village whose reef you dive on. These prices are still okay if you are 5, but if you are on your own, you must still pay full whack, making diving here prohibitively expensive. This is on top of the transfer fees to the Dive Center, the dive fees and equipment rental fees. Hopefully the SCP (Socotra conservation protection association) will come to its senses as a result of the closure of the dive center, but right now they take the view that Socotra is unique in the world and since there is only one dive center, tourist will just have to pay $100 or more per dive and deal with a lot of hassle arranging dive guides and boat pick up points (you can’t take a boat from the shores of a Natural Park area, even though the fisherman anchor their boats here and fish for sharks to export fins in these Parks.

So what do you get for all this money? Poor viz (a problem throughout Yemen) due to plankton means that the fish and hard corals there are not seen to best effect. There are lots of moray eels though. On one dive in Roosh, we saw loads of free swimming moray eels. There are also small lobsters, small barracuda, false Moorish idol, surgeon fish, and in certain places in Cape Erisel loads and loads of aquarium fish near ship wrecks. Cape Erisel is a three hour drive from the Tent Camp (it costs $70 a day to hire a 4 wheel drive and driver for a round island excursion. Most cars can only seat 4 passengers, but sime have bench seats in the back, but its dangerous to drive like this on the bad roads with tanks in the back) but apart from boasting the best diving in Socotra also has fantastic scenery on the way, through sand dunes with fresh water and greenery (beloved by Italian campers seeking to avoid the expensive Dihamri Camp). Diving at the village closest to Cape Erisel, you also get to dive from a fishing village which catches sharks (hammerheads; thresher; white tips; grey reef) and see how they cut off the fins and dry out the rest of the shark for meat. The village makes $30 for a baby shark up to $200 for a whale shark and is quite happy for you to take photos of this, for the Asian export market (note that shark meat is also an important part of local diet). All this means that you will be lucky to see any sharks while you dive. Diving by the tent camp is in a marine park, but the diving is quite average. We were told that the Shoab wreck, one of the signature Socotra dives, was now off limits to divers because it was breaking up and dangerous, but this may not be the real story.

If you still want to try diving in Socotra and braving the SCP’s crazy rules, you should be able to rent equipment from the Summerland Hotel in Hadibo, even with the Dive Center closed. But there are far better places in the world to dive.

There are two flights a week. Friday there is a flight to and from Sana and Al Mukalla and on Sunday there is a flight to and from Sana and Aden.

AL MUKALLA:

The best place to dive in Yemen-- in the Arabian Gulf. (You can also dive in As Salif on the Red Sea but have to go far out to get to the reefs and there are few established operators.) The scuba center is based at the Hotel Hadhramaut, but you will be more comfortable staying at the Holiday Inn and getting them to pick you up there. (The Holiday Inn has a jetty and a well equipped dive shed with showers, toilets and rinse tank) so this is no problem. Dive sites are a 10-15 boat ride away and despite being so close to the harbor there is a profusion of reefs and lots of fish life. (Note that navy loves to check out dive boats and will board to check you out especially on your first day diving and it can be a bit intimidating to surface with a machine gun pointing at you!) Viz is best in the early morning and gets bad in the late afternoon, but you can never see more than 15 meters due to sediment in the water (problem throughout Yemen).

The Scuba Center used to be run by a German Instructor who built it up over 6 years. One of Renee’s employees, Salah, took it over and runs it to Western standards. The tanks and equipment for rent is all new and imported from Germany, and they are very punctual about picking you up. The small Dhow style boats have a sun deck and an ingenious system where the railing around the boat can be opened up so that you simply have to back roll out of the boat.

While Salah will organize the dives for you, he rarely dives any more. Make sure you ask the dive guides to dive slowly—most of them are commercial divers used to task based and rapid diving and will zoom around at full speed and then surface as a result of lack of air after 40 minutes.

Coral Reef is just outside the Hadharammut hotel and boats eels, stone fish, cuttlefish and lots of black sea urchins—common throughout Yemen. Turtle Meeting gives you a chance to see nesting turtles, but the viz and conditions have to be right. The MV Alimand is a 150 cement wreck that went down in 1998 during the World Cup Finals—the crew set off emergency flares which were ignored because people thought they were joining in the celebrations of the French winning! Fortunately, the crew managed to get off alive in launches. Its 150 meters to the bottom and there are two props (one spare in the sand) and 146 meters. The bridge area is at 20 meters and boasts huge groupers and other fish. We put a buoy up the night before diving the wreck and it was gone in the morning—the fisherman take buoys that don’t belong to them—and had to abort the dive as you can’t find the wreck without a rope to get down due to poor viz.

 

[kruz]

Great report!

 

[EnronX]

We'll I'm guessing this thread will get some new views soon.

Socotra was just selected as one of the new UNESCO heritage sites, boasting the Island as "the Galápagos of the Indian Ocean."

Eight New Natural Wonders Named - Yahoo! News

I've had the honor and opportunity to dive the Galapagos and seeing a comparison like that got me busy researching...:book2:

I enjoyed reading the trip report above, but it sounds like 50 feet vis is the norm and sadly the fishing villages are too busy finning sharks to have a real handle on ecology.

 

[khaledbaleid]

Hi, I am from Yemen and Socotra is a part from district of ADEN , now I am living on UK but I would like to dive in Socotra and my be open a Scoba dive club their for international Scuba Divers because it is really a wenderfull and colorfull sea life also there are new dive locatins in Aden, all it needs a lettel push to develope the advertising and scuba dive sports there.

 

[khaledbaleid]

Hi, I am from Yemen and Socotra is a part from district of ADEN , now I am living on UK but I would like to dive in Socotra and my be open a Scoba dive club their for international Scuba Divers because it is really a wenderfull and colorfull sea life also there are new dive locatins in Aden, all it needs a lettel push to develope the advertising and scuba dive sports there.