Scuba Q and A: What’s The Best Advice For Someone Starting Open Water Diver Qualification?

Filed Under: Scuba Diving Q and A by Andy Davis

Scuba Q and A:

What’s The Best Advice For Someone Starting Open Water Diver Qualification?

Q. What advice do experienced divers have for someone starting their PADI Open Water certification?

Answer:

Practice, practice, practice.

Do not accept the bare minimum timescale for graduation if you are not very confident and competent to go diving unsupervised afterwards.

Most agencies mandate ‘performance driven training’ – meaning that your mastery of skills should be fluid, comfortable and consistently reliable. You shouldn’t progress at each stage until that level is reached. That is a standard that diving instructors are bound to adhere to (but, sadly, many don’t).

Don’t let dive instructors rush you through training.

You paid for training, not just to be handed a worthless card. Make sure you’re properly trained to be a safe and confident diver from day #1.

Instructors who focus only on “fun” should work in a clown circus, not be training people to dive safely and be able to survive things going wrong underwater.

About the Author

Andy Davis is a RAID, PADI TecRec, ANDI, BSAC and SSI qualified independent technical diving instructor who specializes in teaching advanced sidemount, trimix and wreck exploration diving courses across South East Asia. Currently residing in ‘wreck diving heaven’ at Subic Bay, Philippines, he has amassed more than 9000 open circuit and CCR dives over 27 years of diving across the globe.

Andy has published many magazine articles on technical diving, has written course materials for dive training agency syllabus, tests and reviews diving gear for major manufacturers and consults with the Philippines Underwater Archaeology Society.

He is currently writing a series of books to be published on advanced diving topics. Prior to becoming a professional technical diving educator in 2006, Andy was a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force and has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Belize and Cyprus.