BY Saipan Tribune

Japan-The Northern Marianas must develop a wider variety of diving spots to keep the interest of Japanese divers.

“Saipan, particularly the Grotto, is already a popular diving spot for Japanese divers,” said Takashi Shigiya, senior editor of Marine Diving, Japan’s oldest diving magazine with a circulation of 170,000. “But it needs to offer new diving experience.”

Saipan, Tinian and Rota were named the fourth best overseas diving area in the 2007 Dive & Travel Awards. It is an annual event held by Marine Art Center Co. Ltd., which publishes Marine Diving, Travel Diver, and Marine Photo. The awards were based on a poll of about 8,500 readers, divers, and travelers attending the Marine Diving Fair last April.

The Maldives, Palau, and the Philippines beat the Northern Marianas to the top three spots. Their common features: the opportunity to see a wide variety of species and the availability of Japanese speaking staff.

“For divers, the most important thing is the quality of the dive. As long as the ocean is good, they can put up with pretty much anything else. There has to be something special in the water,” said Shigeko Nishikawa, senior editor at Travel Diver Magazine.

Meanwhile, the Northern Marianas owe their popularity largely to affordability and proximity to Japan.

Shigiya said that a diving trip to the Northern Marianas costs less than 100,000 yen, or $875. This is about half the cost of a trip to the Maldives.

For the islands, this can be a double-edged sword. The cheap price perpetuates the islands’ reputation as a low-end destination. But it allows divers to make frequent trips to the islands. This brings the Northern Marianas back to its main problem as a general tourist destination, adequate airlift.

“Many divers would go to Saipan four or more times a year, but there are no flights to take them there,” Shigiya said. He added that charter service does not help the divers, as they tend to make last-minute bookings. Often, by the time they decide to go on a trip, the general tourists have already taken the airline seats.

There are approximately one million active divers in Japan. Every year, some 300,000 new divers are licensed. At least twice a year, Japanese divers visit diving sites overseas, as well as within their country. The most popular spots in Japan are Izu and Okinawa.

Equal numbers of Japanese men and women are divers. Typically, the Japanese diver would be in his or her last 20s to the late 30s-younger than most divers of other nationalities.

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