About the Course

PADI® Open Water Diver is the first scuba certification level. A highly-trained PADI Instructor will teach you how to scuba dive in a relaxed, supportive learning environment.

By the end of the course, you'll have the skills and knowledge to dive at home or abroad and be an ambassador for the underwater world.

Take This Course If You Want to

• Explore the other 70 percent of our planet

• Support ocean protection

• See things you've never seen before

• Learn from a scuba diving expert

• Carry the world's most recognized scuba certification

Learn How to

• Be a confident and skilled diver

• Assemble and use scuba gear

• Manage your buoyancy

• Respectfully approach marine life

• Handle common problems

PADI eLearning®

PADI eLearning makes it easy to fit scuba lessons into a busy schedule. Learn about scuba diving principles and terminology whenever, wherever it's convenient for you.

It's your course on your time. Study offline, or online using a computer or mobile device. Connect with your instructor whenever you have a question.

• eLearning time commitment: 5-10 hours

Practice using scuba gear in a pool (or pool-like environment) until you're comfortable. PADI training includes practice "mini dives" to help you build confidence in your new abilities before making four dives in open water.

• Prerequisites: Able to swim; medically fit for diving
• Total time commitment: 2/3 days
• Minimum age: 12 years or older
• Depth: expect shallow dives (12m), the maximum allowed depth is 18m

Scuba diving requires a minimum level of health and fitness. Chronic health conditions, certain medications and/or recent surgery may require you to get written approval from a physician before diving.

Avoid disappointment, download and review the Diver Medical form to ensure you won’t need a physician’s approval to dive before enrolling in a scuba course. Instructors, divemasters and dive shop staff are not physicians and should not be asked for medical advice; only medical professionals can give medical clearance to dive.

Course prerequisites: able to swim, medically fit for diving, comfortable in the water

During the Open Water Diver course, your instructor will ask you to:

• Float or tread water without aids for 10 minutes
• Swim 200 metres/yards with no aids or 300 metres/yards with mask, fins and snorkel

Minimum age: 12

Confined Water Dives

You’ll take your first breath underwater in a calm environment such as a swimming pool or tranquil lagoon (known as “confined water”). You’ll practice basic diving skills such as clearing water from your mask, ascending and descending. Your instructor will demonstrate and review the skills with you until you’re comfortable performing them on your own. When you feel ready, you’ll move on to the final phase, open water diving!

Open Water Dives

You’ll learn to dive by diving to a maximum depth of 18 metres/60 feet. The open water course includes four open water dives in total, usually done over two days. With your instructor by your side, you’ll practice the skills you learned in confined water, and explore the underwater world.

Most student divers complete their dives close to home, in the ocean, local lake, quarry, or other body of water. You can also complete your four “check out dives” on a tropical holiday; ask your PADI Instructor about an Open Water referral which allows you to take the knowledge development and confined water sessions in one place and your ocean dives in another!

After completing four open water dives and all course requirements, you become a certified diver – a title that will last a lifetime. Now you are free to explore the other two-thirds of our ocean planet!  As a PADI certified Open Water Diver, you’ll have access to many exciting PADI courses that help you reach your diving goals—whether they be exploration, ocean conservation, underwater photography, wreck diving, or your other favorite interest areas.

Included in the course price:

• PADI Open Water Course Material;  e-learning online theory, log book
• PADI application and certification fees
• All tank air fills
  
• All gear hire including;
• Wetsuit, Fins, Mask, Snorkel
• BCD (Buoyancy Compensation Device) & Regulators
• Weight belt & weights
• Cylinder / tank