DiveOS → Maldives diving regulations → The boat
Maldives · unofficial working notesThree crew, a flag of a stated size flown day and night, four competences aboard, fuel for a trip that changes, a searchlight if you are diving after dark — and an outright ban on dropping the anchor at the site. The vessel rules are spread across two chapters and an amendment; this pulls them together.
This is not legal advice, and it is not an official translation.
We are a software company. Not a law firm, not certified translators. Everything below is our own reading of Dhivehi-language instruments. Treat it as a starting point for a conversation with the ministry, not as a substitute for one. Where we are unsure — and there is one real ambiguity below, about how many people the rules actually require — we say so rather than rounding it up to confidence.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 8, clauses 1 and 2.
A vessel used for diving is the responsibility of the dive centre and its crew — that is clause 1, and it matters because it puts the boat inside the centre's compliance perimeter rather than the skipper's.
Then the number: at least three crew. And the regulation does not leave them as bodies. They must be there for the safety of the divers, and to give help in whatever way help can be given. Three people who happen to be aboard is not the same as three crew in the sense the clause means.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 3, Part 8, clause 1.
When diving happens away from the centre, four capabilities have to be present on the vessel:
Four competences, three crew. The arithmetic only works if one person can hold more than one of them — which is almost certainly the intent, but the text does not say so.
We are flagging this rather than resolving it. The clause opens by describing "a person who meets the requirements below and who has experience", then lists four. Read as four separate people it would contradict the three-crew minimum in the other chapter; read as four competences that may overlap in fewer people, everything is consistent. The second reading is the sensible one and it is what we would plan around — but it is our inference, not the regulation's words, and if you are staffing to the letter it is worth asking.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 3, Part 7 (sample in Annex 1); Chapter 2, Part 8, clause 7.
The flag gets more specificity than almost anything else in the regulation, and the reasoning is given openly: transport activity happens across a very wide area in the Maldives, so knowing where divers are is treated as absolutely necessary.
The regulation also states what the flag is for, and it names jet skis specifically alongside other vessels: it tells them there are divers below, and to stay away or approach carefully. A flag that is technically aboard but not visible is not doing the job the clause describes.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 8, clauses 6 and 8.
Five items, and the clause is explicit that having them is a responsibility of the dive centre's staff — not the boat's:
And for night diving, separately: a searchlight must be present on the vessel, in a way that it can actually be used. The phrasing is worth keeping — present and usable, not merely present.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 8, clauses 3, 4 and 5.
Contact with the centre, at all times while diving is going on. The regulation lists the acceptable means — walkie-talkie, mobile phone, radiotelephone, or a CB set. It is an availability duty, not an equipment one: something on that list has to be working for the whole time divers are in the water.
Fuel for the trip, and for any change that may have to be made to it. That second clause is the interesting half. Fuel for the planned trip is not the standard; fuel for the trip you might end up making is.
And if the weather turns while divers are under, the crew must know well what has to be done to bring them back. Phrased as knowledge held in advance, which makes it a briefing-and-drill obligation rather than a competence assumed on the day.
Regulation 2013/R-172, gazetted September 2013 (volume 42, issue 231), inserting clause 9 into this same Part 8.
The 2013 amendment belongs here, in the vessels part — that is literally where it was inserted, as clause 9. From the moment the first person enters the water until the last is back aboard, the captain must pay attention to the divers' air bubbles.
Read alongside the rest of Part 8, it fits a pattern: the boat is not a taxi that waits. It is fuelled for a changed plan, reachable throughout, crewed by people whose stated purpose is diver safety, and watched over by a named person for the whole immersion. We covered it separately in our cylinder and bubble-watch notes; this is its proper home.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 3, Part 14, clause 1.
Dropping the anchor at the area being dived is prohibited. Flatly. The regulation then describes what it expects instead, as a statement of ordinary Maldivian practice rather than a rule: letting the dhoni drift and running it under power.
It also explains itself, which most of the instrument does not bother to do. Anchoring destroys the places where fish live — corals and seagrass beds are named.
If anchoring genuinely becomes necessary, there are two permitted ways to avoid reef damage: drop on sand, or use a mooring buoy.
A note on that last option: the decode we work from truncates this clause at a page break, right after the word "or". The second, independent decode supplies the mooring-buoy alternative, and that is where we have taken it from — so it rests on one source rather than two, unlike the rest of this page.
Every section names its chapter, part and clause, and the crew-versus-competences question is one we would like an authoritative answer to.
One caution about who to ask. The responsible department has been renamed at least twice across these instruments — Ministry of Tourism in 2003, Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture on the 2013 amendment, and ފަތުރުވެރިކަމާއި ތިމާވެށްޓާބެހޭ ވުޒާރާ, Ministry of Tourism and Environment, on the March 2026 procedure. For anything current, that last name is the one to go by. Vessel licensing sits with the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation.
Certificates that expire, a flag with a minimum size, a searchlight that has to work, a radio that has to be answered, and three crew whose competences must add up — a boat leaves with a list, and the list is the compliance. Have a look if it is useful.