Liveaboard scuba diving boats are for divers who just want to dive and nothing more. They don't care about shopping, watching TV in a hotel room or site seeing other than beautiful coral reef.

Liveaboards come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. They are built to serve as hotel, restaurant, dive shop and sometimes even a photo lab all in one package.

Most liveaboards are power boats, although some motors boats are rigged for sails also. In general bigger boats are more luxurious than smaller ones; smaller boats though are more accomodating to more intimate group settings. Big boats have more room which means larger cabins, more fresh water and more deck space. Larger boats also mean more people on board and that could mean larger groups of divers. As a rule, anything under 65 feet is a small boat; anything over is considered large.

The liveaboard boats travel from site to site usually at night when you're sleeping and arrive at the sites by morning ready for an intense schedule which can be four or five dives a day. For an experienced and dedicated scuba diver, this is a slice of heaven but for the beginning scuba hobbyist it can be very boring. For the dedicated diver, the positive attributes of a liveaboard are:

• More pristine dive sites

• More adventure

• Flexibility

• Ability to make new friends due to close quarters

• More dives per day

• Lesstravel time

• Less hauling of gear

Like all things in life, there are a couple of negative things about liveaboards that scuba divers need to be aware about. They are:

• Confined spaces

• Rolling and pitching of boats - sea sickness

• Limited scenery

• Limited menu

• No shopping and no escape

Again, if you are an inexperienced diver and just want the thrill of the dive, the pluses far outweigh the negative qualities of liveaboard scuba diving vacationing.