Traders Ridge Dive Center

Traders' Ridge Resort, Yap Island, Micronesia

Welcome to Traders’ Ridge Resort, located on the Island of Yap. Here, on an unspoiled Micronesian island, you can enjoy world-class scuba diving and a host of environmentally friendly activities.

This intimate retreat of 20 rooms and 2 Grand Suites is styled in unique 1880's Victorian architecture offering all the amenities of a 5 Star Hotel.

Our staff is trained to see to your every need and attention to detail is our trademark. From the moment you enter our spacious lobby, the warm and friendly atmosphere of Traders´ Ridge makes you feel the resort is your home.

Traders’ Ridge Dive Center

Location
The Traders’ Ridge Dive Center (TRDC), is located on the
Traders’ Ridge Resort below the pool area. It is conveniently
located only a few steps down to the Dive Center. The dive center has its own dock, which is exclusively used by TRDC.

Type of Dives
We offer the following dives:

Wall Diving
Drift Diving
Manta Watching Dives
Shark Feeding Dives
Mandarin Fish Dives
Night Dives
Afternoon Dives
Two Tank Dives
Macro Dives
Wreck Diving
Deep Dives
Shallow Dives

Please keep in mind that we guide our guests through one of the world’s best dive areas. If you have any questions about available dive sites we are more than happy to address these personally.

Equipment
Our Dive Shop is housed in a Folk Victorian Style building, located on the shore of Chamorro Bay. This building was specifically designed and built for the special requirements and desires of our divers.

In order to meet all demands, there is always enough equipment available for hire:

20 BCD's Jackets (ScubaPro )
20 Regulators with octopus, pressure gauge and inflator (Subaru)
20 Sets comprising of mask, fins and snorkel (Subaru)
40 wetsuits (3 mm Shorties, Seemann)
6 dive computers (Oceanic)
6 underwater torches
We pride ourselves on excellent service and equipment. Therefore we have 100 Aluminum tanks (12 liter, DIN + INT) available. For the tank filling we use two powerful compressors (Air and NITROX).

For NITROX certified guests we offer NITROX FOR FREE.

We have a well equipped workshop available for use by our guests. The members of our staff are always ready to give advice, lend a helping hand or personally fix the equipment.

Service
Service is our key to success, that’s why full service is not a question at the Resort. Your equipment will be loaded and unloaded by our staff on and off our boats, assembled and disabled before and after diving. Your equipment is always rinsed in fresh water and stored in our equipment room, ready for the next use.

We also offer towels, snacks and a choice of water, coffee, or tea on the boats as well.

Boats
We are equipped with the three fastest speed boats on island, as well as with a small, one engine boat for very small, intimate dives.

TR Boat 1: Length 8,82 m/29,35 ft, width 2,34 m/7,79 ft, capacity 10 guests,2 x 115 hp
TR Boat 2: Length 8,82 m/29,35 ft, width 2,34 m/7,79 ft, capacity 10 guests,2 x 115 hp
TR Boat 3: Length 10,04 m/33,44 ft, width 2,48 m/8,26 ft, capacity 10 guests,2 x 115 hp
TR Boat 4: Length 5,50 m/18,32 ft, width 1,90 m/6,32 ft, capacity 4 guests,1 x 60 hp

Safety
All our boats are equipped with oxygen (Venol system), an emergency
First Aid kit, a small tool box, a radio and cell phone. Yap has its own
Recompression chamber, which is located in the hospital in Colonia.
Doctors are on call 24 hours.

Diving
Safety is our biggest and foremost concern. We pay special attention to less experienced divers. This is shown by our care in choosing easy dive sites and giving extra attention.

We adhere to the PADI rules. Our depth limits are 18 m/60 ft for Open Water Divers, 30 m/100 ft for Advanced Open Water Divers and 40 m/133 ft for certified Deep Divers.

All dives are guided and the ratio of our groups is a maximum of 6 divers per guide. We would like everyone to have the best experience on their dive. Experienced divers are welcome to dive without a guide (buddy diving) after knowing the dive site. This is a nice perk for photographers.

The dive sites are all reachable within 5 to 40 minutes by boat.

Our standard is double tank dives. A double tank dive is when we arrive at the dive site, go for one dive, do a surface interval of at least one hour (during which we serve coffee/tea, water and snacks). Then we begin our second dive and drive back to the dive center. For afternoon or night dives we offer daily additional single tank dives.

Guests at TRDC dive as long as their gas lasts, even when it’s more than an hour.

We plan our dives with the tide times to ensure the success of a dive. This is also to insure the best conditions possible and it is also why our departure times can differ.

Dive Education
Resort Course - Discover Scuba
For all guests who are not divers yet, we offer Resort courses. These Resort Courses consist of a proper introduction in the pool followed by a possible meeting with the Mantas. The course is 1:1, instructor to student ratio. The finale is a special TRDC Manta Award, sent by email, to make our Resort Course unforgettable.

Diving courses
As a PADI Dive Center, we offer classes from Discover Scuba Diver to Dive master. We also offer the following specialty classes – Deep Diver, Underwater Navigation, Night Diver, Wreck Diver, Underwater
Photographer, Drift Diver and NITROX up to 40%.

Beginner courses (PADI Open Water Diver) usually take 3 to 5 days to complete. These classes take place in our pool as well as in the open water.

All certifications will be done online; photographs will be made directly at the Resort.