A scuba certification is your license to explore the underwater world safely and confidently. The most common starting point is the Open Water Diver certification, which qualifies you to dive worldwide with a buddy to recreational depths. If you’re wondering how to get scuba certified, the process is straightforward, structured, and designed for beginners with no prior experience. This page focuses mostly on the Open Water process, each additional certification follows the same process, with a couple of exceptions (Enriched Air, one of the most popular specialty certifications, does not require an in-water dive). Other specialties are all done in “open water”.
Before scuba training begins, students complete required paperwork including medical questionnaires, liability waivers, and enrollment forms. This ensures you are medically fit to dive and understand the safety standards involved in earning the certification. In some cases, physician approval may be required prior to participation.
The academic portion of scuba certification is completed through online eLearning. Students study dive physics, dive planning, equipment systems, and emergency procedures. This knowledge prepares you to make safe decisions underwater and builds the foundation for successful open water dives.
Hands-on scuba training includes confined water (pool) sessions followed by supervised open water dives in a quarry, lake, or ocean. During these dives, students demonstrate essential skills like buoyancy control, regulator recovery, and emergency procedures. Once completed, you earn your internationally recognized scuba certification and are ready to dive anywhere in the world.
As with most organized sports, there is paperwork. While diving is a safe sport, there are certain medical conditions which can be exacerbated by diving. It’s important to note our instructors have cursory medical training. (as it pertains to diving) but we cannot make diagnosis or medical recommendations.
Therefore, every diver must answer a brief medical questionnaire & sign a waiver prior to beginning scuba lessons. Answering yes to a question on the medical form isn’t the end of the world, as many times the follow up questions will clear you for diving. At worst, you may require a physician sign off before you get into the water.
Every dive agency & instructor has a mandatory paperwork requirement to complete prior to the start of training.
Both forms shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to complete.
If you have already obtained your e-learning through PADI or SDI, please contact us so we can provide you with a discount code.
Start by clicking the button below.
Scuba diving gives you the ability to visit a completely foreign world, and that world has a set of rules that is easy to understand, but does require some education. I like to compare it to driving. If you’ve never seen a car, a road, road signs or watched anyone drive, you wouldn’t last very long on the road.
The studying portion is often the easiest. but also the hardest step, at the same time. To begin your journey as a certified scuba diver, you’ll receive your your e-learning materials/code for the educational component. You can go thru this at your leisure but we do require you complete all materials prior to getting in the water.
Our instructors will verify you’ve completed your elearning, check your test scores and review anything you have questions about (or missed on the test) to insure you are ready for in-water training.
While everyone learns at their own pace, this is generally a 4-6 hour process.
At any point if you have questions, we are here to help.
Now we get to the fun stuff, the reason you signed up in the first place, we get to go underwater! Before we start your in-water training, we need to fit you with your personal scuba gear. This consists of your mask, fins and snorkel.
You can stop by our shop during business hours to get fitted OR contact us to setup a private fitting appointment.
In-water training is done in 2 sections; pool & open water. You start your training in a shallow pool to learn basic scuba skills (breathing underwater, clearing your mask, clearing your regulator, etc). This is for safety so you can stand up at ANY point if you aren’t feeling it. Once you have mastered those skills, we move you into a deeper pool (10′) to work on skills like buoyancy, swimming, etc.
After you master your skills in the pool, we move to open water. This is done in the ocean during one of our charters or, most often, in one of our local quarries (Fantasy Lake or Mystery Lake). This is where you show off your skills to the instructor, and learn a couple more. It’s also where you get your first glimpse of being a true diver; hanging out with the fish and checking out a brand new world.
Pool sessions are 3-4 hours each (you have 2) and open water sessions are 4-5 hours (you have 2). We conduct training over a minimum of 4 days. Read more about how long your open water certification takes.