Blue Marlin Dive Gili Trawangan

★ 5 · Caroline S. · 2011-10-02

We are two Dutch girls from Amsterdam and this is our third time in Gili Trawangan and of course, diving with Blue Marlin! First time around (November 2009) we did our open water course and were so excited that we immediately booked our advanced course and decided to stay another week on Gili T. We had our own Dutch instructor, Edwin, who was very enthusiastic and a very good teacher. The staff at Blue Marlin is very nice and friendly and always eager to help you around. After some traveling amongst Asia, we decided to return to Gili to spend another two weeks there and sign up for the rescue course with Blue Marlin. A great experience all over in which we learned a lot. The dive sites at Gili are great and the people at Blue Marlin always know where to go. Now we are back for the third time and couldn't think of any other place to go diving with than Blue Marlin. We are doing some fundiving here and we were warmly welcomed back by everyone of the staff. We highly recommend Blue Marlin to everyone who loves to learn diving or wants to do some fundiving at Gili. At Blue Marlin you will definitely have a great time, whether in the water or with the lovely staff at the bar!!

★ 1 · Ron v. · 2010-01-29

My girlfriend and I booked a week at this dive resort as we had heard good stories of friends of ours about Blue Marlin on one of the other Gili Islands. Too bad all the dives for our first day were fully booked so we had to look for another dive centre. Luckily enough there are plenty on the island, so we went to the competition. The day after there was enough room, so we went under with the Blue Marlins. We went to a site called Shark Point, which was supposed to be really nice (which it really is, we just didn’t see any of it with the Blue Marlins). As we arrived at the spot, everyone was excited and rushed in their gear. Instead of having one of the Indonesian dive masters or European instructors do a current check (as most other dive centres on the island do, we discovered later), a double check where the reef is or even a briefing, we jumped right in. We asked which way we would be going and just before we went down the dive master pointed out the way we would be going. When the dive master discovered that we weren’t anywhere near the reef, he guided us to swim against a (strong) current to the reef. Because of the strong current, swimming was quite hard and my girlfriend had to stop a couple of times to get her breath back. The dive master kept swimming really fast, to the point that he actually was out of sight. Of course we were able to locate him by his bubbles and we knew where we were supposed to go, but still… Meanwhile my girlfriend (a fit non-smoking girl in her twenties) got really tired and when we finally got back together with the dive master and almost reached the reef, one of the other divers was low on air, so we had to go up, after having seen nothing interesting, just 29 minutes of sand. Of course dives like this happen, but the worst thing was still to come. When we were back on the boat, my girlfriend was so out of breath because of the fast swimming against the current, she was feeling nauseous and had to throw up. And this is the worst part of it all: Instead of asking if everything was alright or if she needed some water, the dive master looked the other way and didn’t pay any attention, while she was clearly not feeling well, because of his actions! And not only he didn’t ask, none of the Blue Marlin dive masters did! We told them that in our opinion, this wasn’t the way things are supposed to go and that we would be diving with someone else for the rest of the week. Still we didn’t get much of a reaction… As we slept at the Blue Marlin resort, a lot of people (including the managers) saw us leave with our dive stuff every day and not once someone came over to ask whether everything was okay with her, apologize to us, or to ask if there was anything they could do to fix this situation. We did hear a lot of good stories about the Blue Marlins when we were on the island, especially from diving students who had done a course with them, so the (European) instructors are probably a lot better than the (local) dive masters. But at the other dive centres, we weren’t the only one having had a bad experience with the Blue Marlin dive masters, so this definitely wasn’t an isolated incident. In my opinion therefore, if you are planning on taking a course, Blue Marlins is probably the centre you’re looking for, if you’re just there to do some fun diving, try one of the other centres on the island and you’ll probably get the most out of your Gili diving experience!

★ 5 · Katharine B. · 2009-06-01

I did 11 dives here over the course of a week. I started as a new Open Water diver (I'd done my certificate in Malta previously) and did a scuba review here and then did the Advanced course here. It seemed a good place to learn. They do 3 dives a day and all of the dive sites are only about 10-15 minutes' boat ride away. All the divemasters were Indonesian and Adi is the most experienced and was great to dive with. All the instructors are European or Australian. The visibility was great, there was plenty of coral to be seen and wonderful marine life. 29 degrees C at 30m. There is a swimming pool at the dive centre and a bar and restaurant, and every Monday the upstairs turns into a nightclub. It's a really fun island to visit and there's plenty to do besides diving - an outdoor cinema, snorkelling with turtles right off the beach, great restaurants with fish barbecues every night.