Beirut & Jounieh

Two bases split the coast. In Beirut one centre sits inside the Mövenpick Hotel on the Raouché seafront, right on the stretch where the city's diving happens, and in Jounieh, 16 km north, the club runs guided dives and courses along the Keserwan shore. Some of the reef and wall diving around Beirut and its bays is shore-accessible, but the wrecks and offshore sites are boat dives, with rides to most sites of 10 to 25 minutes.

The shallow diving is rock: formations and walls around Raouché with light, structure and easy profiles. The deep diving is mostly wrecks on sand. The Souffleur lies broken in two at 38–40 m, the Alice B cargo ship has its deck at 27 m and the seabed at 37 m, and Shark Point averages 34 m. Octopus, moray eels and grouper live on the rock and the wrecks, stingrays rest on the sand and eagle rays pass in the water column, and lionfish, rabbitfish and pufferfish are part of the mix.

The Alice B asks for Deep and Nitrox training, with penetration reserved for wreck-trained divers, and Shark Point is an advanced site where currents can be significant. The Souffleur is a war grave: divers look and photograph but take and move nothing. Close to the city, run-off cuts visibility after rain, and wind and swell build quickly enough that offshore wreck dives are the first thing called off, most often in winter.

It suits deep-trained divers who want wrecks with history and a working city around them, and newer divers can still fill days on the Raouché rock and take courses in Jounieh. Jounieh Bay is sheltered and often divable when more exposed sites are not, but anyone set on a winter trip should expect to lose dives to the weather.