Heya Bit-Tech community! Im thinking of taking up diving and was wondering if there was anybody here who has trained to dive and can give me an idea of where I should start ? From what im gathering off Google a good first accreditation to get is a PADI open water diver certificate, but im a bit confused of how it all works and what companies are good to learn with! Always a pleasure, Bogo
Yeah a great sport, There's lots of place's that do the courses you would first train in swimming baths and then go on to diving in the sea , One of the best places is in swanage Dorset and a favorite place to dive is Warbarrow bay in purbeck Dorset, There's a rope that you follow and it take's to a wreck and then to a visitor's book that you sign under water, Also Kimmeridge which is amazing underwater, Not a cheap hobby though also FYI a scuba diver cant fart below 33ft due to the pressure LOL.
I've got my PADI open water ticket. I learned whilst I was out in the Maldives. Most holiday locations with dive centres will insist on PADI accreditation or something equivalent (such as British Sub Aqua etc), but they will usually run courses to allow you to get your qualification.
I got a PADI advanced open water a number of years ago and training for it and the subsequent diving has been some of the best things i have ever done Best bit was a midnight dive
PADI, NAUI, and SSI are the "big three" for introductory certification (at least in the US), I personally got SSI, because that is what the only dive shop in 50 miles uses. The certifications don't really differ much in the content taught, so you won't really miss out on anything if you choose one over the other. It's a great sport if you have the time and the money to put into it. Everyone in my family dives, and we all love it, just wish we could do it more often.
Yeah, PADI seemed to be the one google was telling me to do. Theres a course out in the maldives that runs for 5 days including both pool and sea diving which sounds interesting, but that one in dorset sounds cool, id love to visit a sea wreck and also dorset might be cheaper... theres a place called Fathom and Blues im looking at
Yeah - 5 days is how long mine & MrsGOO's course took. It's quite amusing doing homework at night after several beers in the beach-bar. The one piece of advice I will give you is steer clear of Stoney Cove - it's a disused quary that some UK clubs use for open water dives. It's got a notorious reputation for getting people killed... My friend's wife is the Head Health & Saftey Inspector for the region, and she's been up the numerous times after fatalities to do the investigation into what happened. I'd love to do some diving round the UK, but I fear I'd be doing it on my own. MrsGOO doesn't much fancy the cold water.
Either join a scubadiving club (they're usually cheaper, more thorough, but slower) BSAC or CMAS or the likes PADI is the easiest, fastest (most expensive) way of doing it, but check the dive school on the internet first. Biggest problem with PADI is everyone and their dog can open a PADI diveschool, and while there are many serious, good ones, there are a lot af black sheep out there. Especially in the holiday regions, there is a tendency to go into open water too fast, too deep, too long. (as thats what the customer paid for) Make sure your class is small (max. 2-3 per instructor in the pool, one on one for the first open water dives) Make sure you're not supposed to learn the theory "in an hour or two after dinner, in the bar" (a PADI favourite, "just watch the 30min. instruction video, then you'll know") It's a great experience, well worth taking your time for. As I said, there are many serious PADI schools as well, but the system of getting people into the sea wihin one or two days is faulty by default.
Another thing - don't go buying lots of gear before you try it out. If you do want to buy shiney stuff, I'd recommend you get your own mask, fins and snorkle - that way if you find you can't stand it (it happens - one girl who was learning on another holiday I was on was devastated to find she just couldn't handle being underwater for any length of time), you haven't had too much outlay and you still have gear for snorkling. Everything else (BCD, weights, tank, regulator, dive computer) you can rent. The good thing about having your own mask is if you're like me, and wear glasses (or contacts - apparently not a good idea to wear contacts diving), you can get the lenses of your mask made up with your perscription.
It's a fun sport but it sure aint cheap. You can buy your own gear, or rent (as others have said, it's best to buy your own fins, mask, snorkel). I stopped diving because of the fact that it would cost me 50 euros per dive and my back doesn't enjoy it tbh. I've got the advanced open water which lets you go to 40 metres. I went down to 37 in the UK, at plymouth. It's a great sport if you haven't already got another expensive hobby. I'm more into photography these days and find I get more pleasure out of that, minus the back pain, and 50 euros every time I go out to dive. I went with PADI. No problems here.
My ex was a CMAS and PADI certified free- and wreck diving instructor... she loved it (obviously). She also went nuts about places in the warmer, clearer seas of the world (and as a consequence spent a year on Grand Cayman Island as an instructor). I know that basic certification is pretty easy to attain on holiday to those places.
PADI is for pussies, real men go the BSAC route. Seriously though i took the BSAC route at a local club and all the tuition was included in the club membership fees. You also got to borrow kit until you were confident enough to buy your own. It might not be as fast and glamorous as 5 days in the maldives but its cheaper and you pick up a lot of experience from the other members of the club. Plus if you can dive in the waters off the UK then you can pretty much dive anywhere.
she used to say that as well... But yes... getting PADI is pretty easy. 5 days in a pool in the Maldives/Caymans/Hawaii/a-million-other-places should do there.
Correct North sea divers to tend to turn into dry-suit-p*ssies after a while though And yes, renting eqiupment is good for the start (or with a club you get it included)
Would add to the suggestions of going the BSAC route if you can. Training is slower and more methodical and leads IMHO to better divers. Not to say all PADI divers are crap, have dived with some great ones, but anyone can get a padi cert over a few weekends buy some kit and turn up at a dive site with very little understanding of what is really going. If you join a local BSAC you normally get the community also, pub nights weekend trips liveaboard holidays etc. Plus you can normally arange for a try dive in the local swimming pool to see if you like it for either just a few quid or even free of charge. A few posts back about stoney cove, I know they have had a few issues (usually involving tech divers going down to stupid depths) but have dived there a lot and they're pretty on the ball, it's a national dive centre in an old quarry (rather than just a disused quarry) they have a dive school, equipment show, first aid and rescue boats as well as the traditional bacon sarnie and pints of decompression fluid.
PADI and BSAC trained here. Learned in the middle east when I lived there and had some amazing experiences. Night diving is out of this world, entirely different with regards to what you see and how the marine life interacts at night. Wreck diving is fun as well been to a few wrecks over there as well as in Cyprus. PADI is probably the most recognised around but I would still prefer to train BSAC if I had the choice. Only reason I did both was because I lived in Saudi Arabia and was to young to be trained in BSAC so did PADI then my dad trained me in BSAC.
A lot of people get killed at Stoney Cove, but then it is pretty much the most popular training dive site in the UK. Thousands of learner divers = a lot of potential for harm. If the law of averages demands that one in every ten thousand learner divers dies within their first ten dives, the majority of those in the UK will happen where the majority of learner divers dive. There's not much, if anything, inherently wrong with the site.
We have a Quarry like that in northern Germany. People get killed there every year. It's 60m deep with tunnels. The killed ones are usually: -inexperienced going for depth. -inexperienced exploring the tunnels -having trouble with frozen first stages, and no buddy to help them (small, deep quarry makes for cold water) -unsuitably suited (again, cold water and surfer neoprene don't go together) Conclusion: they're usually Darwin Award material. It harms the reputation of the quarry, which now obliges people to dive with two seperate first stages. Ah well, I moved away anyway
