CIP Marseille - Centre International de Plongée
Port de la Pointe Rouge - Entrée N°3, Digue Ouest, 13008 Marseille, France, Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, FRA
About the Center
The Centre International de Plongée (CIP) Marseille, located in Marseille, France, stands as the city's oldest diving center. This establishment is a certified provider by both SSI and TDI, offering a comprehensive array of diving courses. These include Advanced Open Water, Instructor Development Course, Freediving, Technical Diving, and Boat Diving. Specialized certifications such as Wreck Diver and the French Niveau 4 Guide Palanquée are also available.
The facilities at CIP Marseille are designed to cater to divers' needs, featuring showers, lockers, and accommodation. The center also provides equipment rental and air fills (including nitrox). Boat diving is a core activity, and for the convenience of visitors, airport transfer services are offered. The staff communicates in French.
CIP Marseille boasts a prime location at the gateway to the Calanques National Park, granting access to over fifty distinct dive sites. These sites encompass historical shipwrecks, caves and arches with vibrant light displays, underwater aquariums, and iconic drop-offs adorned with majestic red gorgonians. The center promotes itself as a place of life and sharing, promising dives rich in marine biodiversity and breathtaking topography, all enhanced by a cheerful atmosphere and the opportunity to forge new friendships.
Available Courses
7 cursosNIVEAU 4 FORMATION
Formation pour obtenir le Niveau 4, permettant de superviser des plongeurs jusqu'à 40m et d'accéder à l'enseignement.
Baptême (1 plongée)
Découverte du monde de la plongée en circuit fermé.
Initiation (2 plongées)
Deux plongées pour s'initier à la plongée avec recycleur.
1 DEMI-JOURNÉE D'INITIATION À LA PLONGÉE SOUTERRAINE
Introduction à la plongée souterraine, y compris l'utilisation d'équipements spécifiques.
Formation AP Diluant Air
An eight-dive rebreather course on the AP Diving unit, run out of Port de la Pointe Rouge into the dive sites of the Parc National des Calanques. The course is led by Fabien, who became an AP Diving instructor in 2025 and combines a background in neurosciences with four years of rebreather diving experience. The Calanques provide a varied training environment: sea fan walls, submerged grottos, arches and wrecks — enough variety across eight dives to cover different conditions and profiles without leaving the local area. CIP runs rebreather outings every day, with the option to stay underwater up to 120 minutes per dive, which makes the training schedule flexible around the student. AP Diving has been producing commercially available closed-circuit rebreathers since 1997 and holds CE certification since 2003. The brand's documentation of tens of thousands of dives is part of why CIP chose it: spare parts are available worldwide, the behavior is predictable, and the redundancy built into the system is readable rather than hidden. The course covers the unit from first principles through to independent operation. From this certification, the program at CIP extends into trimix normoxique dives (65€ to 85€ per dive depending on configuration) for divers who want to push further into technical diving. The center also offers Two Tanks and Afterwork formats for certified rebreather divers who want to explore the Calanques on their own schedule.
SSI Free Diver
The SSI Freediver certification is taught by Julien, E3 instructor and CIP's dedicated freediving specialist. Training takes place in the Parc National des Calanques — the same territory used for all CIP's diving, with its grottos, sea fan walls and clear Mediterranean water providing the open-water component. The course follows SSI's structure: e-learning first, then sessions in a protected environment to build comfort with equalization, duck diving, fin technique and relaxation, then open-water dives in the Calanques. By the end you hold a certification that authorizes freediving to 20 metres with a buddy in open water anywhere in the world. Julien describes the approach as familial and relaxed, which fits the general atmosphere CIP projects. The freediving program at the center is actively expanding in 2026 with more fixed dates on the calendar, including specific discovery events and SSI Freediver training sessions. Freediving at CIP is not an add-on to the scuba program — it sits alongside rebreather and cave diving as a dedicated discipline with its own instructor, its own calendar and its own structure. The Calanques, with their submerged grottos and arches, give a freediver more to explore than a flat sandy bottom would.
Journée Découverte Plongée Souterraine
A full-day cave diving discovery course run by the CIP Marseille team out of Port de la Pointe Rouge. The center's professional arm, Immadras, has managed security operations in the Grotte Cosquer since 1995 — a submerged prehistoric cave under Ministry of Culture oversight — and that hands-on background informs how cave diving is taught here. The full day format allows more time in the cave environment than the half-day initiation (112€), covering equipment handling and technique across more than a single dive. The grottos in and around the Calanques — La grotte du CNRS, La grotte Arc-en-ciel, La grotte Mystérieuse, La Grotte à corail among others — provide the training sites. This discovery day sits in the middle of the cave diving progression at CIP. The two-day structured cave course runs at 416€ and the advanced three-day course at 580€. All are taught by the same team that conducts archaeological survey, 3D scanning and security work in a real submerged decorated prehistoric cave. For the Cosquer work specifically, CIP and Fugro partnered from 2015 on 3D digitization of the cave — first for scientific data, then from 2017 toward the replica inaugurated in 2022. Divers training in cave technique here are learning from the people who do it professionally.
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Frequently asked
What people ask before booking
Yes — they dive every day of the year, morning and afternoon. Training and dives are fully personalized, so you choose the dates that work for you. In summer the program expands with additional formats and themed outings.
Two Tanks is two dives at two different sites inside the Parc National des Calanques, with a picnic break between them. It's run in small groups and designed to show the range of the Calanques in a single day.
Yes. The rebreather baptism is a single dive at 180€, and the two-dive initiation runs 290€. Both are led by Fabien, AP Diving instructor since 2025, who works specifically on making the equipment approachable for newcomers.
CIP offers the SSI Freediver certification, which authorizes diving to 20 metres with a buddy in open water. The training combines e-learning, sessions in a protected environment, and open-water dives in the Calanques.
Yes. The program starts with a half-day initiation at 112€ (one dive, equipment introduction), then a full discovery day at 222€. Structured courses run over two days (416€) and three days for the advanced level (580€).
Afterwork dives are late-afternoon outings at the best Marseille sites, away from the peak-hour crowds. Friday Afterworks are reserved for autonomous divers (at least level 2 / independent certification).
You drive directly to the building at Port de la Pointe Rouge (Entrée 3 - Digue Ouest, 13008 Marseille). The boats are steps from the entrance, and the rinse station is on the quay right at the boat exit.
CIP offers training up to Niveau 4, the French qualification that allows you to supervise certified divers to 40 metres and opens access to monitorship. The course is tailored around the student and includes preparation for the final exam.
How to get there
Port de la Pointe Rouge - Entrée N°3, Digue Ouest, 13008 Marseille, France, Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, FRA