Asian Diver and Scuba Diver No.6/2014 Volume 135 | Page 8

HISTORY

FROM THE GULF
OF MANNAR A History of Diving in Sri Lanka

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SRI LANKA has a diving history
that likely stretches back 500 years,
although historian Joao Ribeiro
only published the first native dive
account in the mid-1800s, after the
Portuguese Ceylon period. Later, Sir
James Emerson Tennent, the fifth
colonial secretary of Ceylon (as Sri
Lanka was then known), also wrote
about age-old dive sites during the
early British colonial period.
These writers concentrated