We went diving from the island Lesbos in October 2005, with the only dive school on the island called Lesvos Scuba Oceanic Diving Centre. They generally only dive with locals, so they do not really expect you to go diving with them. They have a state of the art dive boat though (no shop) and the gear is ok. Luckily, some crewmembers speak good English, but other than that everything goes the Greek way.

Island life

Lesbos is the third largest Greek island and lies in the Aegean Sea, close to Turkey. It is an easy to reach holiday destination. Many charter flights go there directly, or fly via Athens. The island is volcanic and therefore its rock structures are rough and its lands are quite fertile.

It is a fairly traditional island, were you can get to know the Greek way of life, their culture and their customs. The most common forms of accommodation are apartments and hotels, which you usually book in package deals. Everyday life is cheap and most people here live of the tourist industry, fishing and olives. During the summer months you can dive also in Petra and Sigri, but normally you can only dive from Mythilene.

Lesvos Scuba Oceanic Diving Centre

When you call Lesvos Scuba Oceanic Diving Centre for a dive and have found your way to the boat in Mythilene at about 10.30 in the morning, don’t expect things to move fast. At least one of the divers is going to be late and everyone waits. When extra passengers wave from the sore, the boat turns around to pick them up. All this causes the first hour delay.

Than you go for a dive and afterwards the 2 hour surface interval ends up to be a 4,5 hour surface interval. In the mean time, many people swim to the boat with their dive gear on their backs to join. This leads to frantic counting of ‘full’ tanks in order to get everyone diving. By the time a safe second dive site was found and the boat properly parked, it was almost dark and we had to bring torches down in the water. We arrived back in Mythilene about 3 hours late and nobody seemed to care at all.

Diving conditions

The dive sites are located next to small rocky islands. There is not a great amount of marine life around, because spear fishing is still legal here and the larger species therefore hide deeper down, below 40 metres.

The water temperature in October is about 22 degrees Celsius, but this varies between 13 degrees and 26 degrees over the seasons. The visibility here is a fantastic 30 metres. or more.

Agios Vassilios

The first dive site was called Agios Vassilios, where you dive alongside a steep cliff that goes straight down to the bottom of 60 metres deep. This wall has many little caves, where you can find moray eels. There are also many centipedes crawling around and you’ll see sea-urchins as well.

Tarti caves

The second dive site was called Tarti Caves, where you can enter a large cave that is situated on a depth of about 20 metres. It is very colourful and many tiny fish species live here. You can penetrate the cave quite far and some entrances to the further parts are very narrow. These caves a not a great idea for people with claustrophobia. Again, there are many smaller caves where you can find moray eels, octopus, centipedes and scorpio fish.

Dving here is certainly different, but fun

The crew is very friendly, professional and takes an interest in your background. They adopt all safety regulations and take great care. So if you have a lot of patience and you do not mind a tank with only 170-180 bar in it, go for it and give it a try!