DiveOS → Maldives diving regulations → Depth limits
Maldives · unofficial working notesThe Maldivian diving regulation sets a hard ceiling, a lower default, and a no-decompression rule — then goes out of its way to say, twice, that there are no exceptions. It names off-duty instructors specifically. That is an unusual thing for a regulation to bother spelling out, and it is worth knowing why.
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 a Dhivehi-language instrument. Treat it as a starting point for a conversation with the Ministry of Tourism, not as a substitute for one. Where we are unsure, we say so rather than rounding it up to confidence.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 3, clauses 1, 4, 5 and 7. Read from the Dhivehi.
The regulation sets 30 metres as the deepest anyone may go on a recreational dive in the Maldives. Not 30 metres for the well-trained and something else for everyone else. Thirty, full stop.
Underneath that sits a second number most people miss. A qualified diver is entitled to 20 metres — or shallower, if the agency that certified them says shallower. Going past 20 is not a matter of comfort or of who you are diving with. It requires deep-diving training, and the regulation says so twice in different ways.
Being supervised by an instructor does not buy you the extra ten metres. The diver themselves has to hold the deep-diving qualification, or be actively in training for it.
That last point is clause 7, and it is the one that quietly contradicts how a lot of centres actually run a fun dive. An instructor in the water is not a permission slip.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 3 clause 2 and Part 4 clause 1 — near-identical wording in both.
Most rules state a limit and leave the edges to argument. This one closes them deliberately, and it does it twice — once for depth and again, in almost the same words, for decompression. The list it gives is:
Then: no one is excepted from this.
Spelling out "off-duty instructors" is not accidental drafting. It closes the exact argument a dive professional is most likely to make — that the limit is a customer-safety rule and does not apply to them on their own time, off the clock, on their own gear. Under this regulation it does.
The enforcement clause is worth reading alongside it. Someone who disregards the regulation, or breaches it deliberately, may be banned from diving. And where the person is a dive centre employee, the wording goes further: the relevant government authority may take corrective action against them personally. The consequence attaches to the individual, not only to the centre that employs them.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 4, clause 1.
Only no-stage-decompression diving is permitted in the Maldives. Planned decompression diving is not a technique the regulation treats as advanced or discouraged; it is simply not among the things it permits for recreational diving.
For most centres this changes nothing about the day — recreational profiles are no-deco anyway. What it changes is the framing. A deco obligation you swim off on the way up is a training matter between a diver and their agency in a lot of places. Here the same profile is outside what the regulation allows, and the same no-one-is-excepted list applies to it.
Diving Regulation 2003, Chapter 2, Part 5, clauses 2, 3 and 4.
The same chapter turns three things that are often informal into stated obligations.
Pure oxygen has to be available at every dive centre. Not recommended, available.
There must be a plan for what happens when a dive goes wrong — the regulation says it must be prepared and laid out, and specifies what it has to cover:
And it is not a plan for the drawer: all staff must be familiar with it and must act in accordance with it.
A note on our own wording: we previously called this a written plan. On a closer reading that is an inference, not the text — the regulation requires the plan to be prepared, and the word for "in writing" (ލިޔުމުން) appears elsewhere in the same part, about course fees, but not here. Corrected 22 August 2026.
A base leader must be on duty every day, carrying responsibility for the centre. If that person is absent, a named assistant base leader carries it instead. Responsibility is meant to be attached to a person on any given day, and to be transferable on purpose rather than by default.
We have read Chapter 2, Parts 3, 4 and 5. The regulation runs to far more than that, and the parts we have not read closely are not summarised here — the gap between skimming and reading is exactly where this sort of page goes wrong.
Specifically unresolved: how the 30-metre ceiling interacts with technical or professional diving outside recreation, what the training standards in Part 1 require of an approved centre, and what the equipment parts (6 and 7) specify. Those are separate readings and we have not done them yet.
Both limits appear a second time as outright prohibitions, alongside a 24-hour rule about flying — see when you don't dive.
Part 10 sets the qualification bar for the base leader mentioned above, along with the permit and insurance requirements and a mandatory check-dive rule — those are in who you may put in the water.
The cylinder testing and bubble-watch notes cover Chapter 3, Part 9 and the 2013 amendment. We checked the amendment against this page's provisions: it does not mention depth, decompression or oxygen, so as far as we can tell the rules above stand unamended.
Every section names its chapter, part and clause, so you can go to the instrument instead of trusting us.
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 in 2013, 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.
If something is wrong, out of date or superseded, tell us and we will fix it and re-date the page. The last checked date is when a person last went back to the source, not when the file was last edited.
A depth ceiling that binds off-duty staff, and a base leader who has to be named each day, are both roster problems before they are safety problems. That is the part a system can help with. Have a look if it is useful — the notes above stand on their own either way.