Explorer Ventures Liveaboard Diving FleetReviews of explorerventures.com

Impressed by all personnel helpfullness, team spirit, friendliness and willingness to serve.

Brett was great as a dive master. His obsessive searching for Nudibranch/ Octopus made it extremely interesting and enjoyable. Assisted me in becoming a full fledged night diver as well! (WSOXNN)

It was run very well and efficient with Safety as priority. The staff were always smiling and very helpful. The best I've ever had on a live aboard. Food was excellent, the rooms were top class with plenty of room. The boat was always clean and the free bar fully stocked up. We had a great holiday on board.

We had a truly delightful experience during our dive adventure. Despite the boat being on the older side, it proved to be more than suitable for our journey—a no-frills ship that got the job done. The standout feature was undoubtedly the exceptional dive master crew, consisting of Thor, Kait, Saane, and Brett. Julian, the chef, deserves special mention for his outstanding culinary skills throughout the week. Not only did he whip up delicious meals, but he also demonstrated a keen awareness of my wife's allergies, ensuring her dietary needs were met without compromising the enjoyment of others on board. Unfortunately, we encountered a day lost to diving due to an impending hurricane, a risk we were aware of when booking during this time of the year. However, the captain's consistent communication kept us well-informed, fostering a sense of safety despite the ship enduring some rough seas. This being our inaugural liveaboard experience, we gleaned several insights during our time on the dive boat. We began with wrecks off St Kitts, navigating to Saba post-storm and encountering a plethora of marine life, from sharks and stingrays to turtles, lobsters, and a charming seahorse. Having embarked on over 500 dives, we observed a departure from our usual routine. Unlike our accustomed practice of exploring different dive sites each day, this ship seemed to revisit dives daily. Furthermore, the typical pattern of starting with deep dives in the morning and transitioning to shallower ones later in the day was not adhered to, possibly due to the prevalence of Nitrox divers. While Nitrox does have its limits, it felt as though the boat didn't prioritize or organize dives based on depth and time constraints. In light of our experience, we would strongly recommend Nitrox certification for all divers on this boat, and perhaps even consider making it mandatory. While it was an overall enjoyable week, the restrictions imposed by not utilizing Nitrox did put a slight damper on the experience.

It was ok, We have done over 10 liveaboards this was in the bottom 25%. Ship captain so so, crew good. Boat itself nice but to tall. Rocks and sways more than other liveaboards. Aggressor boats much better. Dove T&C on both boats. Aggressor wins hands down. Cut the top deck off and the ship would be better off. Moorings could have been better. We had a lot of swimming to do to reach the wall which meant very limited dive time on the good stuff. More than half the dives where this way. FOOD WAS GREAT!! Chef Wonderfull. Update to response for others benefit. Aggressor was moored with us and it never swayed or rocked. Everyone on board noticed the difference. Also the tropic system came after our trip was complete, we did not have weather issues other than a little wind. Seas where nice and good vis. Its the boat design, sorry.

One our fellow travelers died on the first dive of this trip. There is no blame to be offered, but this will overwhelmingly make the rest of the trip a sad experience. Despite the horrible event I do believe that the crew did their best effort to salvage what they could of the trip

I feel Red Sea diving is for Advanced Divers. Daily 90'+ dives, currents & wrecks. I don't recall deep dives and currents in the information about the Red Sea. It is beautiful diving though! The add-on land tour of Cairo was well worth it.

I just completed a week on the Turks & Caicos Explorer II. First, a big thank you to the crew. They are a great group, always helpful, professional, and a really fun bunch. I also appreciate their willingness to answer all the questions I asked. Second, the food was good, plentiful, and varied. Third, I saw more sharks during the week than on all dives together over 12 years diving in the Caribbean. I saw some fish species I’ve not seen on other Caribbean dive vacations, e.g. Black Jacks on night dives. I also saw some very large lobsters, very tiny squid, and on one night dive an octopus that we watched for 15 minutes. Fourth, the boat is one of my favorite of the 6 or so liveaboards I’ve done. It was very comfortable. It has a good camera table and a spacious dive deck. All diving is from the mother ship. Finally, a special shout out to Molly, who led most dives during the week. She gave informative dive briefings both on what the dive plan would be as well as on what to look for. I loved the detail she told us about the different things to look for. It was very educational. She has a great wit and shows such enthusiasm for what she’s doing. I gave it four stars because as a result of conditions only nature can control, the boat was not always in the best position to land over the wall when entering the water. This led to some long underwater swims to go from the shallows to the wall. This evidently doesn’t happen often, so it’s just one of this luck of the draw things.