Sri Lanka: Trincomalee v

Mar 2025

While in Trinco, I became aware it has decent diving. Riding around town, I came across Blue Water Sports, stopped in, liked what I heard, and signed up for 2 dives the next morning.

Luckily, it was just the divemaster, the captain, and me, a nice small group. Getting going was fast and easy as the shop is on the beach, the boat is right there and the dive sites are nearby. We planned a wreck site, the Underwater Museum, and a coral site, Navy Reef.

It was a fast 5-minute trip to the Underwater Museum. On arrival, a navy patrol boat approached the boat and checked our papers. (Security is high in Tricomolee due to past terrorism incidents, including navy ships sunk by "suicide frogmen"). The Underwater Museum sits along a long finger reef, consisting of 2 purposefully sunk navy ships and a bunch of statues, sitting on a flat sandy bottom at around 20m. We swam through the site for half the dive, then moved on to the reef, which is a long rock that rises to about 10m. The entire dive site is fairly barren, sandy bottom, rock, small fish, not a lot of coral. Overall, a decent dive.

Dive 2, Navy Reef, was nearby, close to shore. This is a very good shallow coral site, with impressive fan corals, fish and sea life. We swam with a turtle for much of the dive, and it approached each of us for a closer look. At one point there were 2 turtles. Another highlight was a massive moray. This was a 70 minutes dive.

I highly recommend diving in Trincomolee, with Blue Water. Apparently there are other interesting sites, including a shipwreck further offshore, and an island park. I also read about some underwater archeology by Arthur C. Clark and others who discovered artifacts from the nearby temple.

Questions or feedback?

Contact me at terraxplor1@gmail.com,