Water Sports in Dubai: Jet Skis, Kayaks, Diving and the Rules

Free-roaming jet ski hire is not a thing in Dubai. Rides are guided in a convoy with a lead rider, along an approved route, and that is a coastguard rule rather than an operator preference.

What this means in practice is good: you are taken to the views rather than left to find them. The standard route runs from the Marina out past the Burj Al Arab and towards Atlantis and the Palm, which is where the photographs come from. Our one-hour ride to Atlantis and the Palm is that route.

30 minutes is too short. A good part of it is spent getting out of the Marina at low speed. An hour is the sensible minimum if you want time at the landmarks.

You do not need a licence. Minimum age to drive is usually 16, with younger children allowed as passengers. Photographs are almost always sold separately, and a ride with an onboard sound system is the same route with better company.

A discover scuba session lets an uncertified beginner dive to about 12 metres with an instructor, after a pool or shallow-water briefing. It is not a course and does not certify you, but it is a real dive.

The honest part: Dubai is not a great dive destination. The Gulf side is shallow, warm and often low on visibility, and the marine life is modest. The east coast at Fujairah is markedly better and that is where serious divers go.

What a first dive in Dubai is genuinely good for is finding out whether you like breathing underwater before committing to a course elsewhere. Treat it as that and it is excellent value. Expect two to three hours in total for perhaps 30 minutes underwater.

Do not fly within 18 hours of diving. This catches people on the last day of a trip more often than anything else on this page.

Clear-bottomed kayaks with LED lights, paddled around the Marina or the Palm after dark. It sounds like a gimmick and it is the trip people talk about afterwards.

The reason it works is temperature. Dubai's water is a bathtub for eight months of the year and the sun is the limiting factor, not the sea. Removing the sun removes the problem, and the skyline lit from water level is a better view than any deck.

It is calm-water paddling with no experience required, and it suits people who would not book a jet ski. Our night kayaking session runs from the Marina.

If you want the adrenaline version instead, a flyboard session off the Burj Al Arab is thirty minutes of falling over followed by about five of actually flying, which is the honest ratio for a first attempt.

Deep-sea fishing out of Dubai is a private-boat product, priced per boat by the hour like a yacht charter rather than per person. Four hours is the usual minimum and it is mostly trolling and bottom fishing for kingfish, queenfish, barracuda and grouper.

The good operators will cook your catch on the way back or arrange for a restaurant to. That is worth confirming, because it changes the day from a boat ride into a meal you caught. Our deep-sea trip with your catch grilled is built that way; the four-hour trolling and casting trip is the fishing-first version.

October to April is the season for both fish and comfort. Summer trips run but the heat on an open deck at midday is not a small thing.

Catch is never guaranteed, and any operator promising it is telling you something about themselves.