Dive Centers
Dive Centers
The crystal clear sea offers excellent diving conditions with high amount of underwater life, visibility up to 40 meters and beautiful underwater rocky landscapes. You just won’t find coral reef here. In September/October the water temperature is ideally at 27°C!
There are about 30 dive sites, reachable within 20/30 minutes from the port of Kas. The variety is quite impressive, you can go wreck-diving, cave-diving and you can swim through canyons and tunnels.
If you are lucky, you might see dolphins, a Mediterranean monk seal, octopus or maybe even a seahorse (I did! but the poor thing with a dozen of divers taking pictures of it…). The interesting fact about fauna here is that you can meet migrant species normally indigenous to the Red Sea, with encounters of loggerhead turtles, eagle rays, moray eels, groupers, and trumpet fish! It seems they have found their way from the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean Sea! But unlike tropical areas where fish are everywhere, in Turkey you have to be in the right place at the right time.
The most extraordinary point about diving in Kas (which I was not aware of before going) is not about marine life : there are very old amphorae and other ancient relics ( many of them are more than 2000 years old ) waiting for us to discover underwater. In some areas, there are so many of them that we can talk about “amphorae fields”. One question was bugging me on the dive “where do they come from exactly?”
The waters of Kas are full of classical sites with Lycian rock tombs (in the waters of Kekova island sunken city), amphorae, anchor stones and more. Amphorae beneath the surface of the Turkish waters are the remains of ancient civilizations. On almost every dive you can see pieces of broken amphora. An amphora is a type of container that was used in vast numbers for the transport and storage of various products(grapes, olive oil, wine, oil, olives, grain, fish) until about the 7th century AD.
However, Kas is also a special place from an archaeological wreck point of view… In Turkey, underwater archeologists have mapped over 125 sites. But the most famous shipwreck can be found East of Kas and it was found by The Turkish sponge diver Mehmet Çakır in 1982: The wreck of Uluburun from Bronze age.
He discovered strange shapes on the sands, for him they looked like “Metal biscuits with ears” or “dog biscuits”. These »biscuits« were copper ingots from the cargo of the Uluburn ship – with amphorae, stone anchors and other objects. The cedar wood ship dates from the late Bronze Age in the 14th Century BC and is one of the oldest shipwrecks which has been fund. It could have been a merchant ship from the Middle East and gives valuable information about ancient trade relations.
The cargo of the ship contained items from nine different cultures. The discovery included ten tons of raw copper items, food storage jars, glass ingots, Egyptian jewellery, ivory, pottery and oil lamps as well as weapon arrowhead and spear heads.
The excavation of the wreck began in 1984 and continued until 1994, nearly 22.5000 dives were made – in a depth down to 60 meters (which allowed only a short basic time for diving work). The finds are now at the National Museum and the INA archives in Bodrum.
There was an exact replica built and sunk in the spot where the ship was discovered. Replicas of the stone anchors and amphora were placed where the originals were found. You can now dive the spot. This area is now an underwater archaeology park known as the “Arkeopark“. It is also used for scientific training in underwater archeology such as given by the Nautical Archeology Society
There are about 30 dive sites, reachable within 20/30 minutes from the port of Kas. The variety is quite impressive, you can go wreck-diving, cave-diving and you can swim through canyons and tunnels.
If you are lucky, you might see dolphins, a Mediterranean monk seal, octopus or maybe even a seahorse (I did! but the poor thing with a dozen of divers taking pictures of it…). The interesting fact about fauna here is that you can meet migrant species normally indigenous to the Red Sea, with encounters of loggerhead turtles, eagle rays, moray eels, groupers, and trumpet fish! It seems they have found their way from the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean Sea! But unlike tropical areas where fish are everywhere, in Turkey you have to be in the right place at the right time.
The most extraordinary point about diving in Kas (which I was not aware of before going) is not about marine life : there are very old amphorae and other ancient relics ( many of them are more than 2000 years old ) waiting for us to discover underwater. In some areas, there are so many of them that we can talk about “amphorae fields”. One question was bugging me on the dive “where do they come from exactly?”
The waters of Kas are full of classical sites with Lycian rock tombs (in the waters of Kekova island sunken city), amphorae, anchor stones and more. Amphorae beneath the surface of the Turkish waters are the remains of ancient civilizations. On almost every dive you can see pieces of broken amphora. An amphora is a type of container that was used in vast numbers for the transport and storage of various products(grapes, olive oil, wine, oil, olives, grain, fish) until about the 7th century AD.
However, Kas is also a special place from an archaeological wreck point of view… In Turkey, underwater archeologists have mapped over 125 sites. But the most famous shipwreck can be found East of Kas and it was found by The Turkish sponge diver Mehmet Çakır in 1982: The wreck of Uluburun from Bronze age.
He discovered strange shapes on the sands, for him they looked like “Metal biscuits with ears” or “dog biscuits”. These »biscuits« were copper ingots from the cargo of the Uluburn ship – with amphorae, stone anchors and other objects. The cedar wood ship dates from the late Bronze Age in the 14th Century BC and is one of the oldest shipwrecks which has been fund. It could have been a merchant ship from the Middle East and gives valuable information about ancient trade relations.
The cargo of the ship contained items from nine different cultures. The discovery included ten tons of raw copper items, food storage jars, glass ingots, Egyptian jewellery, ivory, pottery and oil lamps as well as weapon arrowhead and spear heads.
The excavation of the wreck began in 1984 and continued until 1994, nearly 22.5000 dives were made – in a depth down to 60 meters (which allowed only a short basic time for diving work). The finds are now at the National Museum and the INA archives in Bodrum.
There was an exact replica built and sunk in the spot where the ship was discovered. Replicas of the stone anchors and amphora were placed where the originals were found. You can now dive the spot. This area is now an underwater archaeology park known as the “Arkeopark“. It is also used for scientific training in underwater archeology such as given by the Nautical Archeology Society
