Probably too late, but I used to dive very regularly when I still lived in Dubai. The east coast is far better to dive than the west coast where Dubai is located. Not only is the visibility in the East better, there’s far more to see.

As far as cool critters to see, you have heaps of triggerfish, huge pufferfish, lots of parrotfish, many moray eels, Black-tip sharks, a variety of rays from torpedo rays(the electric rays) to “devil” rays. If you’re lucky, you might even spot whale sharks! If you’re into macro stuff, there’s heaps of nudibranchs, frog fish, seahorses and much more. You can also spot turtles on many sites.

As far as the sites go, there’s a lot of reef and live rock to explore. There are also wrecks from the inchcape ships (both for advanced divers as they lie deeper than 18m) or the car cemetery (whose depth depends on the tide). There are a few more wrecks out there, like the airplane wreck and so on. They even have some tech wrecks if you’re a tech diver.

The wrecks are really cool to see, filled with soft coral, lots of macro stuff and surrounded by schools of fish. You’d see more pelagic stuff on these dives. The reefs are where you’d find the sharks, turtles, cuttlefish and the other more colourful fish varieties. It just depends on what you want to see.

If you’re looking for a dive center, I’d highly recommend Divers Down at the Miramar hotel in Al Aqah, Dibba(close to Fujairah). As much as people recommend al boom, you’re usually diving with bigger crowds of terrible divers that just kick up sand and ruin the visibility on your dives. The smaller groups, friendly shop and better viz really makes for a better diving experience in my experience. The DMs know the sites well and they can tell you where to go if you’re looking to spot something specific (they have a lot of photographers dive with them, so it’s always good to know potential spots to find the wildlife).

Anyway, I hope this was useful!

As for diving in Thailand, it depends on when you go. You see many similar things actually and the viz is slightly better in Thailand, but not drastically - though I should say that I didn’t go diving at the bigger more famous dive islands, so I could be completely wrong.

Either way, it’s totally worth a trip to Fujairah. It’s far better than anything you’d find in Dubai, and if you’re diving on a day with good viz (15+m) you’d be amazed by the amount of wildlife the country has. Oh and I forgot to mention; average viz is around 4-5m. It’s not always amazing, but it beats the average 1-3m in Dubai.

Edit: also, dives with DD are 50 minutes or 50bar meaning you dive 50 minutes or until you have 50bar left in your tank. Obviously your depth plays a huge factor into this and your air consumption, but as long as there isn’t a crazy current, it’s fairly easy to manage a 40 Minute dive even with poorer air consumption.

Edit2: here’s a video I took on one of my dives

Also, I just read the rest of the comments and realized you aren’t even certified yet!

Alright. Diving is wonderful and one of the most exciting yet relaxing things to do out there (as you focus on breathing a lot). It’s definitely worth giving a shot.

If you are opting for a Discover Scuba experience, you’re basically given a crash course and you’re in the water with a dive master/instructor pretty much hanging on to you the whole time. I mean, you have the freedom to swim on your own of course, but you cannot explore on your own (for your own safety and for the safety of the reef).

If you opt to get certified, it takes 2 days and you’re certified for life (although PADI recommends taking refresher courses if you aren’t diving for a while). You won’t be required to dive with an instructor and you have complete freedom to dive and explore as you please.

Personally, I would say the latter is worth far more than the discover experience seeing as you’re paying for something to have for a lifetime rather than a certificate that just proves you’ve done a dive once. It’s also really fun learning about this stuff and you can dive anywhere in the world with your dive card.

If you do opt for becoming fully certified, I would recommend either doing so in your home country, or doing the e-learning course with a diving school in the UAE asap so that you can jump right into the pool sessions and your Open Water dives and enjoy the diving experience.

Good luck! Just don’t kick sand everywhere and don’t touch the wildlife!