Andaman Islands Diving in India: A 30-Meter Limit, No Decompression Dives and Parks Behind a Permit

Andaman Islands diving rules cap every recreational dive at 30 meters

People searching for Andaman diving land on two different countries. Thailand’s west coast faces the Andaman Sea too, and our guides to Khao Lak and the Similans and to Phuket cover that side. This page is about the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, whose dive centers answer to the Directorate of Tourism in Sri Vijaya Puram, the city called Port Blair until September 2024.

The rulebook is short and blunt. The islands’ scuba diving guidelines were published as a Directorate of Tourism notification in the Andaman and Nicobar Gazette Extraordinary No. 54 of 2 April 2014. Their introduction says they draw on the National Institute of Water Sports in Goa and on the Maldives Recreational Diving Regulation of 2003.

Paragraph 3.6 sets the maximum depth for all recreational diving at 30 meters and names who it binds: tourists, dive center staff, instructors on or off duty, and students in advanced and deep courses. It applies without exception on liveaboard and safari boats. Entry-level divers stop at 20 meters, or at their agency’s own limit if that is shallower, until they are trained in deep diving. Diving beside an instructor is expressly no reason to go deeper.

Paragraph 3.7 is stricter. Only no-stop diving is allowed in the islands, and the text repeats the whole list of people it covers before closing with one line: “No exception whatsoever is allowed.” Paragraph 4.4 then names the prohibited dives: decompression dives, dives deeper than 30 meters, dives less than 24 hours before flying in a pressurized aircraft, and dives in restricted areas.

Two smaller rules shape an ordinary dive day. Solitary diving is not allowed under any circumstances. And after every dive except short, shallow ones, divers must make a safety stop of at least three minutes at five meters, starting it with no less than 50 bar in the tank.

A 2025 draft would lift the Andaman 30-meter cap and keep the decompression ban

On 13 October 2025 the Directorate announced that it was amending the guidelines after consultations with dive training agencies. It placed draft revised guidelines in the public domain for 30 days and asked for comments by 14 November 2025. The draft on its website is headed as a notification dated August 2025, with the day left blank.

The draft splits dive centers into two categories. Category A centers belong to a member agency of the World Recreational Scuba Training Council, and their maximum depth becomes “as per the course and Agency standards”. Category B centers follow the norms of the National Institute of Water Sports, keep introductory dives to 12 meters and take divers aged 12 to 60 only. Entry-level divers everywhere would stop at 18 meters instead of 20.

The decompression paragraph survives unchanged, down to “No exception whatsoever is allowed”, and so does the 24-hour flying rule. On 24 September 2026 the Directorate’s policy page still carried the 2014 gazette and, as a separate file, the draft. No final notification of the revision appeared there, so the 2014 text is the one to plan a trip around.

What an Andaman Islands dive center must see before you dive: a logbook with 900 minutes

Paragraph 4.5 of the 2014 guidelines lists what a diver must present. A certification card from a recognized agency that allows diving without supervision. A logbook showing open-water experience of at least 900 minutes, excluding training dives, which is fifteen hours underwater. A medical certificate dated within twelve months, or a signed declaration of fitness. And a completed registration form at the dive center.

The same text has a softer route for newer divers. Paragraph 3.4 says a diver who cannot show a logbook must demonstrate the skills to the instructor instead. Paragraph 3.11 requires an orientation dive from anyone certified who cannot show at least 30 dives, or who has not dived in the last three months: a shallow, controlled dive to practice mask clearing, regulator recovery, buoyancy, ascents, descents and alternate air. The guidelines call it “not a Test”.

Read together, a fresh Open Water card with nothing logged puts you in the orientation and supervised category, and paragraph 3.5 says divers without the skill or experience for the conditions must dive under the immediate supervision of dive center staff. Bring the logbook. The 2025 draft keeps the 900-minute clause and elsewhere accepts a physical or digital logbook. If you plan to certify on the trip, our note on getting certified while traveling covers the course side.

Andaman Islands diving is limited to listed areas, and Radhanagar Beach is not one

Scuba diving in the Andamans is permitted only in the areas the guidelines list in their Annexure VII, and paragraph 3.10 adds that only registered operators may take tourists there. The list has eighteen entries. Neil Island is open as a whole. Havelock Island is open with its shallow sites and the barren rocks in open sea such as Pilot Reef and Minerva Ledge, “excluding Havelock Jetty and Radhanagar Beach”.

Near Sri Vijaya Puram, the east coast of South Andaman is open between North Point and Chidiyatapu, except around Ross Island, the main harbor channel, Phoenix Bay, Chatham, Haddo, FDN-I and Brichgunj. The rest of the list runs to the east and south coasts of Rutland Island outside the park, Long Island, Avis Island, Sister Island, Campbell Shoal, the North and South Brother sanctuaries, and Narcondum and Barren Island with no landing ashore.

The list is not fixed. On 3 July 2026 the Directorate announced eight new sites in Mayabunder and Diglipur, identified with SSI, after four Diglipur sites were added to the guidelines in May 2026 with the Forest Department’s consent. That makes twelve in North and Middle Andaman. The release gives depth ranges for each, from 1 to 18 meters at Landfall East to 5 to 40 meters at Bochang, whose deeper end lies below the 30-meter limit in the 2014 text.

Diving Andaman’s marine national parks takes a wildlife permit and a daily fee

Several entries on the open list are marked Marine National Park. Three of them, Henry Lawrence, John Lawrence and Outram, are the islands that make up Rani Jhansi Marine National Park in Ritchie’s Archipelago, the chain Havelock and Neil also belong to. Havelock and Neil themselves are not among the park islands.

Jolly Buoy and Red Skin lie in Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park at Wandoor, 29 kilometers from the capital. The Forest Department describes that park as established in 1983, 281.50 square kilometers in total including 220 of territorial sea, with 15 islands, and names Jolly Buoy, Red Skin, Grub and Chester among its islands richest in coral.

Two notes under the list set the terms. Scuba diving in a marine national park is subject to a prescribed fee, and entry is subject to prior permission from the Chief Wildlife Warden. The guidelines reprint the procedure from the Andaman and Nicobar Wildlife (Protection) Rules, 2008: an application in Form 4(A), and a permit in Form 4(B) issued on payment. The Directorate’s permit notice of March 2026 repeats that wildlife sanctuaries need separate approval.

The boat has rules of its own. A dive boat operating in a protected area needs the Chief Wildlife Warden’s permission, may anchor in a marine park only at designated buoys where they exist, and may not anchor within 50 meters of the shore of a park or sanctuary island without the Divisional Forest Officer’s leave.

On the fee, the official texts agree only in part. The 2008 rules as printed in the 2014 gazette and the Forest Department’s current entry-permit page both put scuba diving for an Indian citizen at Rs 500 per person per day. For foreigners the two give different figures, so ask the dive center what the Forest Department charged on its last park trip rather than trusting a number printed online.

Collecting coral or any marine life is prohibited and, in the guidelines’ words, attracts penal action under Section 29 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.

Havelock and Neil are open to foreigners, but the Andaman Islands remain a Restricted Area

The version repeated on travel sites is that India abolished the Andaman permit in 2018. The rule text says something narrower. The Ministry of Home Affairs still lists the entire union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a Restricted Area under the Foreigners (Restricted Areas) Order, 1963, and a foreigner needs a special permit to enter it unless an exclusion applies.

What happened in August 2018 was an exclusion: 29 inhabited islands, Havelock and Neil among them, were taken out of the Restricted Area Permit regime until 31 December 2022. The Directorate’s notice of 5 March 2026 confirms that foreign nationals need no permit for those 29 islands and adds 11 islands exempted for day visits only, valid to 31 December 2027.

The exceptions are where travelers get caught. Citizens of Afghanistan, China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Pakistan, and foreign nationals of origin in those countries, still need a permit granted only with the Ministry’s prior approval, and arriving without one means refusal of entry. The notice quotes the Immigration and Foreigners Order, 2025: origin includes anyone who, or either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents, was born in and permanently resident in those countries.

Two more lines matter to divers. Citizens of Myanmar still need a permit for Mayabunder and Diglipur, where the new northern dive sites are. And any foreign national visiting for purposes other than tourism must hold a valid permit, applied for online at indianfrro.gov.in. The 2014 dive guidelines ask the same of foreign dive professionals, together with an employment or business visa. A season teaching on Havelock is not tourism under these rules.

The 2004 earthquake sank South Andaman’s reefs and lifted many northern Andaman reefs dry

The December 2004 earthquake tilted the plate the islands sit on. A reef survey published in 2005 by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network found that reefs from South Andaman to the Nicobars had subsided, while many reefs in the northern Andamans were lifted out of the water and died. The report’s own passages give different figures for how far the southern reefs dropped, so none is repeated here.

The most common damage came from debris such as logs, washed off the land to abrade and smother coral. The waves were stronger on the west coast of North and Middle Andaman and on all of South Andaman Island and Ritchie’s Archipelago, the Havelock and Neil chain, and most coral died in narrow channels where the energy was focused. The report estimated about 40,000 hectares of reef area destroyed across the islands.

Its early-2005 site notes read like a dive log. At Jolly Buoy, coral colonies more than two meters across were uprooted and scattered. At Red Skin, large colonies broke loose from the reef slope and were washed down to 15 meters. Grub had minimal damage, and North Bay near the capital showed very few impacts at all.

The report also made a forecast: reef flats once capped by sunlight and exposure now lay under several meters of water, which it expected to promote more coral growth, naming Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park. That was a prediction in 2005, not a measurement.

A Havelock dive site bleached hardest of the Andaman reefs surveyed in 2010

The 2010 heat event is the one measured site by site. A team led from the Central Agricultural Research Institute in Port Blair, with a co-author from a Havelock dive company, ran line transects across South Andaman and Ritchie’s Archipelago. Measured as a share of total coral cover, fully bleached coral peaked at a Havelock site the authors call the Wall, at 69.49 percent, ahead of South Button Island at 67.28 and Nicolson Island at 56.45. A second Havelock figure came in at 43.45.

Havelock was also where the most coral escaped: the share of unaffected coral was highest at the Havelock dive sites, at 15.80 percent. The average seawater temperature across the study sites in the first week of May 2010 was 33.8°C, and the authors called the event the worst since 1998. Branching Acropora suffered most, while massive corals largely withstood the heat.

A follow-up study measured what stayed dead. It put coral mortality from the 2010 bleaching at 9.82 percent at Havelock against 2.05 percent in Port Blair Bay, with post-bleaching recovery of 13.29 percent at Havelock and 21.1 in the bay. Once the water returned to normal, most corals recovered.

The timing is the part to plan around. The 2010 paper found relatively warm water building around the islands in the last three weeks of April almost every year, and in 2010 it cooled only with the monsoon in the second and third weeks of May. A further bleaching in 2016 is widely reported for these islands, but the percentages in circulation could not be traced to a primary paper, so none is given here.

An Andaman saltwater crocodile killed a snorkeler off Havelock in 2010

In late April 2010 a 25-year-old American tourist snorkeling off Radhanagar Beach on Havelock was killed by a saltwater crocodile. Officers of the Forest Department and the Zoological Survey of India later wrote up what followed in the Herpetological Bulletin: the department urged people to watch for crocodiles around the beach, put up a warning sign, and identified the animal from an underwater video camera recovered at the scene.

It was an adult male of 4.25 meters and 480 kilograms, and catching it took two months. A night check of the floating cages that began at 22:45 on 6 June 2010 found it in the last one; it was secured by 04:00, taken to Havelock jetty and moved to the mini zoo in Port Blair. The authors were blunt about the limits of that fix: another dominant male will “inevitably dominate the area”.

The wider numbers come from a 2024 study that combined interviews with local people and victims, the Forest Department’s conflict register and a literature review. It documented 36 fatal and non-fatal incidents in the Andaman Islands between 1983 and 2023, a 75 percent increase after the 2004 tsunami, 79 percent of incidents and sightings in the wet season from June to December, and 53 percent in creeks.

The 2012 paper notes that the species is met in open sea, near the shore, in mangrove creeks, rivers and swamps. Obey the signs, and read our marine life safety notes before a shore entry.

Andaman Islands dive trips end at one airport, and the rules want 24 hours before the flight

Veer Savarkar International Airport, about two kilometers south of the capital, is the only commercial airport of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, according to the Press Information Bureau release for its new terminal on 18 July 2023. The Directorate lists regular flights from Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Bangalore and New Delhi.

The official names changed twice. The government renamed Port Blair Sri Vijaya Puram on 13 September 2024, and Havelock and Neil became Swaraj Dweep and Shaheed Dweep in December 2018. The Directorate files its dive operators under the new names.

From the capital, the Directorate of Shipping Services runs regular government ferries from Phoenix Bay Jetty to all populated islands. The Directorate of Tourism lists four private operators alongside them: ITT Majestic, Green Ocean Seaways, Sea Link Adventure, listed with the Nautika website, and Makruzz. It also mentions daily helicopter services to Shaheed Dweep and Swaraj Dweep.

Put the flying rule into the plan from the start. Every trip home passes through that one airport, and the guidelines prohibit any dive less than 24 hours before flying, so the last dive day ends a full day before the flight. A dive insurance policy is worth sorting before arrival as well.

Every Andaman Islands dive center must be registered with the Directorate of Tourism

Under the 2014 guidelines a scuba center must register with the Directorate before it starts work, and the Director enters it in a register and issues a certificate. Registration runs three years for Indian-owned centers and, for foreign-owned ones, only as long as the owner’s Restricted Area Permit. At least one instructor must be certified by PADI, CMAS, NAUI, BSAC or SSI.

The paper trail has teeth. A center needs pure oxygen and an emergency action plan, third-party insurance of at least Rs 10 lakh per person, and instructors carrying their own dive professional insurance. Its boat needs a crew of at least three including the instructor, plus a dive flag, flares, first aid, a radio and medical oxygen.

The Directorate publishes its list of registered water sports operators by location. On 24 September 2026 the scuba tables held 39 entries under Swaraj Dweep, 10 under Shaheed Dweep and 11 under Sri Vijaya Puram, each with a permission expiry date. Every one of those dates had already passed; the latest was 31 August 2026. That says more about how often the page is updated than about any center, but it means the list cannot settle whether a registration is current. The center’s own certificate can.

One more question belongs before the first dive. The model emergency plan in the guidelines routes a casualty to the island health center and, if needed, by air to the capital, and ends by handing the patient to “qualified recompression staff”. It does not say where they are. Ask your dive center where its own plan sends a diver with symptoms.

Six SSI-affiliated dive centers in the Andaman Islands

The Andaman Islands operator list holds 6 dive centers, all published by SSI in its register of affiliated centers, read on 24 September 2026. SSI files three under Havelock: Continental Scuba, DIVEIndia Havelock and Seahawks Watersports. It files DIVEIndia Neil under Shaheed Dweep, Dive Tribe under South Andaman, where the center’s own website gives Bharatpur Beach on Shaheed Dweep, and Ocean Tribe Scuba under Andaman and Nicobar.

SSI rates four of the six for Freediving and two, both DIVEIndia centers, for Extended Range; the Havelock one also for Rebreather. A rating is a statement about the listing, not evidence that a course runs this season, and any course that plans decompression stops would meet paragraph 3.7 of the gazetted guidelines in these waters.

Continental Scuba, Seahawk’s Watersports and Dive India Scuba and Resorts, listed with the diveindia.com address on both islands, also appear by name on the Directorate’s list. The other two do not appear there under the same names, which on a list with every date already past proves nothing either way. Which registers can be read explains what an SSI listing can and cannot tell you.