Welcome to the Southern Aqua-Lung Divers Club Inc.  We are a group of about 50 enthusiastic divers who enjoy both scuba and free diving.  The club promotes the sport of diving in our local area and members organise lots of trips during the year.  We get involved in marine clean-ups and try-dive events to introduce new divers to the sport.  We welcome new members and if you are interested in finding out more information or joining go to About Us.

Our local diving area includes Milford Sound, Doubtful Sound, Stewart Island and the South Coast area. The diving is as good as anywhere in the world, so we are told.  Local water conditions makes for brisk diving at times, but we're all used to it.  If you learn to dive in our patch you will find diving elsewhere a lot easier.  Water temperature varies from 10 deg C in winter to 16 deg C in summer.  Most divers wear 7mm wet suits, while a few have dry suits.  The visibility is generally very good in the Foveaux Strait/Stewart Island area averaging around 5 to 15 metres depending on the tide.  In Fiordland the visibility averages around 15 metres and often is 30+ metres.

Fiordland is home to many Red and Black Corals, these can be seen around a depth of 15 to 20 metres.  Normally these corals live at a depth greater than recreational diving allows.  Because Fiordland has a high rainfall, a fresh water layer of 1 to 10 metres sits on top of the salt water, lowering the light level fooling the coral into living at a much shallower depth.  Southlanders are lucky in today's environment that we are still allowed to catch a good range of fish which are plentiful.  The Crayfish (spiny rock lobster) is much sort after, we also dive for Scallops and Bluff oysters, easily regarded as the best in the world.  When free-diving we may catch Paua (Abalone) and Mussels.