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Croatia is an amazing European diving spot. During summer the sea has a good temperature, the visibility is amazing and there is much to explore in the sea from wrecks to marine life.
In this blog the following topics will be covered:
It’s been a while since the last time we went diving because of the pandemic. Our previous dive was in Malaysia, where we did our Advanced Open Water Divers course. Now our country is finally open again after being in lockdown due to Covid and the day we could travel again we were on the road on our way to Croatia.
During our road trip through Croatia, we decided to do two dives because we really missed being in the water. It was kind of scary because with Covid you have to watch out with some kind of sport activities, so we only went diving because we felt good in our body. Anyway, I’m not writing this blog to talk about the pandemic. I’m here to talk about diving in Croatia.
Diving in the Adriatic Sea
In Croatia you can dive in the Adriatic Sea and it’s amazing. In June, July, August and September is the water temperature just perfect. It’s still possible to wear a wet suit if you like that.
There are many underwater caves, stunning reefs, and many shipwrecks from WWI and WWII to see in the Adriatic Sea. For every diver there is something to do. Besides that, you might be lucky to spot a seahorse.
In Besevo, an island of Croatia, there is also a blue cave where you can dive how cool is that?
Some other amazing places where diving is a must are Brac island, Pakleni islands, Kornati islands and Lokrum island. Of course, there are many more diving places. For cave diving some nice places you can go are Krk, Vis, Cres and the surrounding of Pula.
The Adriatic Sea has clear water which means the visibility is amazing. Most of the time you don’t have to worry about the visibility in the Adriatic Sea.
Like mentioned before, it’s possible that you spot a seahorse but besides that you can also spot dolphins, turtles, and many more. Please don’t disturb the underwater world and don’t take anything out of the sea unless it’s trash. It happens too often that people destroy the beautiful underwater world. Always keep distance from the animals unless they decide to approach you.
Diving Center Shark in Medulin
Diving center Shark in Medulin has a lot of good reviews on Google. It’s also registered as PADI 5 stars. To be honest we don’t think it deserve 5 stars with the experience we had. The communication with the diving center went well and the instructor was really friendly, but for us the safety was not that good.
We told the instructor that we didn’t do a dive for a long time and that we don’t have that much experience. He took us for the first dive cave diving which was nice but he left us alone, we had no idea what to do. The second dive he left us alone with another diver (not an instructor), who also wasn’t a good diver, because he had to teach somebody else to dive (a first-time diver), but we paid for an instructor.
During the dive we were excited, and it was an awesome dive and adventure, but afterwards we talked about it, and we felt unsafe. In the caves the instructor went so fast that he didn’t check on us and he was gone. The caves from that dive are for beginners but we had never done a scuba dive into caves so some information would be good.
They never explain it to us what was going to happen. It was still a nice dive and we are glad that we had this experience, but we are lucky that nothing happened because the instructor was just gone at one point, and we didn’t know what to do.
The same during the second dive I panicked a bit because we didn’t have our diving watch with us, which is hard to know when to do a safety stop. With the other diver that was with us we felt really unsafe, his navigation was not good, he didn’t check on us, went up and down really fast and didn’t look at the air that was left. He also didn’t do a safety stop. We didn’t have our diving watches with us, so we had no idea what was going on. During the second dive I have never been that scared. Luckily nothing happened.
I don’t want to say it’s a bad diving center because of one bad experience. I just hope they look at the diving instructors and that this won’t happen again. The worst feeling you can have, is if you don’t feel safe during diving which was the case for us.
Our diving experience in Croatia
The dive locations were stunning, but we were not that happy with how the dives went because we felt unsafe. Still, the dive sites are amazing places to dive.
Our first dive location was Kamenjak and we dove between caves. It was an amazing experience. Diving in caves is unbelievable but make sure you have an instructor that checks up on you. Besides that, the instructor should explain what will happen in front so that you feel safe. During this dive there were many caves and a lot of starfishes to see. The water temperature was around 16 to 21 degrees Celsius.
The second dive the instructor left us alone during the dive with another diver. We paid for a dive instructor, so we didn’t like that. The second dive was at Uvala Polje and was a reef dive which was a beautiful place to dive. There are beautiful corals, many starfishes and even seahorses if you’re lucky. The water temperature was around 16 to 21 degrees Celsius.
Okay this was our experience with diving in Croatia. I think Croatia is a beautiful country for diving. We hope to be back one day for some more diving. Our experience wasn’t that great but that has not to do with the underwater world because that’s unbelievable stunning over there. If you like diving in different countries, check out our other dives.
