Under Water in Mauritius Without a Licence: a Submarine, a Helmet Walk, or Your First Dive

You do not need a certification to go under water in Mauritius. You need to decide how far down you want to go, how long you want to be there, and what you are willing to sign.

For most people without a licence: the submarine dive to the Star Hope wreck at €139.45 — 35 metres down, 40 minutes on the bottom, your own observation window, and nothing asked of you but the ability to climb a ladder. Cheapest way to stand on the seabed: the Belle Mare undersea walk at €67.50. If you actually want to breathe from a tank: a first dive at Tamarin is €93 — and it will cost you the last day of your holiday.

Five offers, four ways down

Read the second column rather than the first. These are not five versions of the same thing — they are four different activities that happen to share a sentence in the brochure.

The submarine is the only one that is genuinely deep

The boat is a real one: the BS 1100, carrying ten passengers plus the pilot, and it goes 35 metres below the surface for a 40-minute dive, with a personal observation window for each passenger. On the way past you see surgeonfish, kingfish and capitaine, the Star Hope shipwreck, and a sheet anchor from the 17th century. You get a dive certificate at the end, which is a souvenir rather than a qualification.

The physical requirement is one sentence long: you have to climb down a two-metre ladder to get inside. That is the whole barrier. Babies under nine months are not taken.

For anyone who wants depth without training — people who cannot equalise, cannot swim, or simply do not want to — there is nothing else on the island that does this. Two hours total, forty of them under water.

See availability and prices for the submarine dive

The undersea walk is shorter than the photographs suggest

A helmet walk puts a weighted helmet over your head, feeds it air from the surface, and lowers you to the sand so you can walk about with your hair dry. It is a genuinely strange and lovely thing to do.

It is also 15 to 20 minutes at Belle Mare, inside a package that runs an hour and a half and includes parasailing and a tube ride alongside it. The operator says participants must be comfortable in water but states that the activities are for non-swimmers too; children under 8 and pregnant women are not taken, a signed waiver may be required, and it is not recommended for anyone with a severe medical condition.

If the whole lagoon day interests you rather than the helmet specifically, the durations of everything else on that menu are shorter than most people expect too.

See availability and prices for the Belle Mare undersea walk

A first scuba dive is the real thing, with the real conditions attached

Two operators sell a discover-scuba session with no experience or certification needed, and both describe the same shape of morning: a briefing on how the equipment works and the safety rules, practice in shallow, controlled water — clearing the mask, breathing under the surface — and then a guided dive at a reef site. Three hours, €93 at Tamarin in the west and €130 in the north.

The conditions are where this differs from everything else on this page.

You will fill in medical and safety documents for insurance before you go in. No alcohol beforehand, no heavy meal, and arrive fifteen minutes early.

And you cannot dive and fly on the same schedule. One operator spells it out: schedule your dive at least 24 hours before your flight, because your body carries extra nitrogen after a dive and flying too soon is dangerous. That is not a booking policy, it is physiology — and it means a first dive belongs at the start of a holiday, not at the end of one. Nothing else here has that consequence.

Whether diving suits you at all — your ears, your lungs, your medication — is a question for a doctor rather than for a booking page, and the medical form exists because of it.

See availability and prices for the beginner dive at Tamarin

The Seabob is not really a way of going under water

It is a powered torpedo you hold on to, and it is the best-rated thing on this page at 4.9 — from 33 reviews, so a small sample. No experience and no licence are needed, the operator describes it as suitable for all ages, and camera footage is included.

But you go down on one breath, a few metres at a time, like a very fast snorkeller. If what you want is to be under water rather than to move through it quickly, this is the wrong €98.

See availability and prices for the Seabob ride

When snorkelling is the better answer

Honestly: often. If what you want is fish, a mask in the right lagoon beats all of this on price and on quantity. The protected reef in the south-east is the obvious place for it, with rules about where you may swim, and a glass-bottom boat there costs a fraction of any price on this page.

The case for going under is a different one: depth, quiet, and the particular feeling of a reef above you rather than below. That is worth paying for. A twenty-minute helmet walk because the photograph looked good is not.

Which one to book

For most people, and for anyone who cannot or will not swim: the €139.45 submarine — 35 metres, 40 minutes, 4.7 stars from 204 reviews, and the only barrier is a ladder.

See availability and prices for the submarine dive

If you want to try breathing from a tank: the €93 beginner dive at Tamarin — the cheaper of the two first dives, 4.6 stars from 26 reviews. Book it for the first half of your trip, never the last 24 hours.

With children aged 8 or over who want the sand under their feet: the €67 Belle Mare package. Two other activities come with it, which is the reason the price works.

Diving proper, once you have the paperwork, runs to 13 offers from €70 — and the beginner sessions above are the door into it.