How to go from Discover Scuba Diving to PADI Open Water Diver

So you've completed the PADI Discovery Scuba Diving Experience, fell in love with scuba diving, and are wondering what to do next.

PADI’s Open Water Diver is the Next Step after your PADI Discovery Scuba Diving experience. Now you know scuba diving is something you want to keep doing, now it’s time to get certified. The first level of scuba certification is the PADI Open Water Diver course, which allows you to dive with a dive buddy to a maximum depth of 18 meters/60 feet. Recognised worldwide, the PADI Open Water Diver certification is your ticket to a lifetime of diving adventures. The Open Water Diver course consists of three parts, knowledge building (theory), confined water diving and open water diving. When completing your introduction to diving with The Waterhoppers scuba, you can start in the afternoon and count toward your Open Water Diver course.

How to Use Your Discover Scuba Diving Course as Open Water Diver Course Credit

If you have not yet completed a Discovery Scuba Diving course, but plan to do so and think you may want to become certified later, please let your instructor know when booking your Discovery Scuba Diving experience. Knowing your plan, your Discover Scuba Diving instructor can conduct the course in a way that counts towards your Open Water Diver course, reducing the time and cost of certification courses.

Like the Open Water Diver course, the Discovery Scuba Diving experience includes some study, confined water dives and optional open water dives. If your instructor knows that you plan to take the Open Water Diver course within the next 12 months, they can ensure that your confined water and open water dives count as the first confined water and open water dives of the Open Water Diver course. This means that instead of completing five confined water dives and four open water dives, you only need to complete four more confined water dives and three open water dives to earn your open water certification.

Each Discovery Scuba Diving experience requires participants to complete the following confined water skills:

• Inflate and deflate your BCD at the surface
• Breathe underwater
• Regulator clearing
• Regulator recovery
• Partial mask clearing
• Practice equalisation techniques

For your Discover Scuba Diving confined water dive to count towards your Open Water Diver Course, you’ll need to complete these additional skills:

• Don your scuba diving equipment (with assistance) and adjust to fit
• Complete a pre-dive safety check with a buddy
• Breathe from an alternate air source supplied by another diver for at least 30 seconds.
• Descend at a controlled rate into water too deep in which to stand
• Swim with scuba equipment while maintaining control of both direction and depth
• Locate and read the submersible pressure gauge and signal whether the air supply is adequate or low based on the gauge’s caution zone and/or an assigned supply limit
• Recognise and demonstrate hand signals
• Ascend using proper techniques
• Stay within reach of your buddy
• Swim facedown at the surface while breathing through a regulator or snorkel
• After ascent, keep the mask on and continue breathing from the regulator while using the low pressure inflator to attain positive buoyancy
• Deflate the BCD, then orally inflate it until positively buoyant at the surface

That might sound like a lot, but, it all goes with ease. Regardless, you can learn many of these additional skills during your Discovery Scuba Diving experience.

Your instructor will document your experience on the journal page of the Discover Scuba Diving Participant Guide. In the comments section you can manually add a note that you have completed Confined Water Dive 1, and if you have completed Open Water Dive, do Dive 1 in the Open Water PADI Open Water course and opt out of Confined Water 1 and Open Water Dive 1. Please keep these documents safe and give them to your Open Water course instructor when you register.

You have 1 year to complete the Open Water Diver course, so write down the date you joined the PADI Discover Scuba Diving experience. Your confined water and open water dives are valid for one year. If you start the Open Water Diver course more than one year after completing the Discover Scuba Diving experience, you must repeat the first confined water dive and the first open water dive.

Are you ready to dive in and start your diving adventure? Click here for all your options to become a diver.