The other week I started my dive from Bannerfish Bay – right outside the dive centre and, within 7 min I was above the swim through at Mashraba dive site.

For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about, this would normally take around 25 min assuming no current of course. Hence why if we’re doing said swim through, we would enter at Mashraba; but, even then it takes 8-10min to get there. So, what new-fangled sorcery is this?! How did we pull this off? Just the new Suex X-Joy super-freaking-cool, James Bond 007 style Diver Propulsion Vehicles (DPV’s) aka underwater scooters we have.

These bad boys have a 12v battery with a 70 min life span. In short, you can easily get from the Islands back to the dive centre in one hit. This is going to open up a whole new variety of options for those of you that have been here before and want to explore new sites. Especially those places that without a boat or a hell of a surface swim you’d really be struggling to get to. Having said that they’re perfectly capable of doing two dives in a day, when you’re not on full speed ahead mode. You still get a heck of a thrill ride and personally, I prefer it going at a slower speed… you get to see stuff! There’s adapted cables that attach you to the unit so that you’re arms aren’t taking all of the strain, so the whole dive really is effortless.

Now, these things may seem simple – pull a lever and go. But, there are idiosyncrasies that go with all units and so it’s best to have an orientation at least, or better off; do the 1 day, 2 dive DPV Specialty for it. There’s a presentation to listen to whereby you’ll learn stuff like setup, maintenance and battery care and then we go off and do the two dives. The dives do have some skills on such as learning how to control your descents and ascents, turning and tandem riding et al.

Trust me, you’ll have a whale of a time!