Day Trip from Istanbul, Turkey, April 2006

by Neil Richardson

Istanbul, the city where you can purchase anything and everything, and everything in one street. Accommodation aplenty, sites aplenty, and so much already been said about the place. But what about the scuba diving? Well, on my last trip to Istanbul in 2006, I made an attempt to find out what diving is available and possible from the city itself. What did I find?? The nearest dive site is 3 hours away, with many more dive sites 5 hours away +. Most serious Divers in Istanbul choosing to spend a weekend down on the south coast / north Agean sea, to fulfill their diving bug.

With this I learnt that the closest and most commonly dived sites were in the northern part of Saros Bay. So I choose to investigate further. So okay, who to dive with? Well, again, Istanbul has no shortage of dive operators, however unlike most other cities in the world, where dive shops are scattered to the wind, here in Istanbul they seemed to be all located next to each other. In fact, I was to discover 3 scuba shops next to each other, with 2 rivals directly opposite. So, in true expedition style I visited them all. General observations were as follows:

Stock was extremely limited, with each shop specializing in certain manufacturers gear, and each shop stating that they can order in whatever you want from their brochures. Prices were slightly more expensive then in the UK, and the range of gear available to order in was limited very heavily to recreational scuba gear. With that as well, in most of the shops, the stock was heavily focused towards spear fishing and wetsuits, and of the 5 shops, I would only really classify two of those shops as being whole heartedly focused on Scuba. The ironic and bizaare thing being, you can haggle between the shops over a price for an item, taking a price between shops until you get the price you want, or the best price available.

So okay, the diving, I choose to dive out of Saros bay, departing of Saros. I arranged through one of the shops to head down in their bus, and to stay over. I hired weights and cylinders, for a not unreasonable rate (about £116 all in including transport and accommodation), and took out for a day of diving.

The diving we did was not as I was expecting. I admit I had been promised that we would dive the underwater ruins that are scattered around this area, and potentially one of the wrecks as well. Alas, I ended up shadowing the shops open water class in about 15m of water. Admittedly the reef area was nice, and the boat was a relatively modern, canopied 4 stroke, which could hold up to about 12. But I got the distinct impression that to get the best diving in this area, either you had to organize the boat yourself, cut out the shops in Istanbul and head straight down to Saros, for there really is no shortage of rival operators in and around that peninsular, or take out your own boat.

As for facilities in and around Saros peninsular (alas I don't know its real name), it's a weekend retreat place for people from Istanbul. So there is plenty of accommodation at reasonable rates, is reasonably family friendly, the beaches don't really exist or are okay, and the night life is limited.In Saros the accommodation was basic, we're talking a jumped up hostel. However, most of the other hotels / accommodation in the area, were half decent Mediterranean hotel quality. We're not talking 5 star luxury, but clean, nice, with all facilities. Reasonable 2-3 star accommodation. But altogether it's not an ugly place, prices are pretty good, diving is pretty good ( I can imagine it would be fantastic in spots if you can get the right operator), water temp means a wetsuit is a must, the area mostly caters for recreational diving so be warned that you will be expected to be led, and overaul, its really not a bad place to escape Istanbul to. I would strongly recommend a weekend there however, as from what I experienced, I doubt the dive operators operate at any time but the weekend, and it's a very long way for one day of diving.