No PADI cert. Can you scuba dive while traveling?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Why not take the class and be done with it? It might be safer and save your skin or your friends. Some places check for certification and some do not. It all depends on where you are. At the end of the day you could get away with it, but why? The first scuba class I took was the best because I did not know much. If you have had no formal instruction you are in the place of not knowing what you don't know. Take the class and get of of the kidde pool.
 
As the others have said you can do a try dive/resort dive/discover scuba dive/whatever your dc of choice wants to call it. It should include a briefing and some skills practice (partial mask clear,reg clearing & reg recovery and alternate air source use in most cases). The skills are not mandatory in most cases (depends on the training agency the dc is affiliated with), but if you do not do them you are more limited by depth with most training agencies - you can only dive to around (agency dependent) 6m/18ft max (? not great at imperial!) as opposed to around 12m/35ft max if you complete the skills.

I'd agree that if you have the time someplace it makes much more sense just to finish your OW training - provided you can find a reputable centre that you trust. I always find Trip Advisor is good for that - reviews from real people and customers who have used a product/shop/accommodation etc before you are handy for getting a true feel for place. There are undoubtedly a fair few cowboys out there in tourist destinations, but I'm sure if you name some locations many of the others on here can help by pointing you in the direction of somewhere you'd get a good course and good service.

I agree with Mr C above that it will make you safer and more knowledgeable. But another bonus of taking the course is that diving will become a heap cheaper for you afterwards. As a DSD student you must be accompanied by an instructor, so your dives will cost more than those of certified divers who need only a Dive Master/Dive Guide.
 
certified divers who need only a Dive Master/Dive Guide.
Nitpick: Certified divers (excluding those holding a 'cert' like PADI Scuba Diver) don't need a DM or a guide.

In many places around the world, if you have a PADI OW cert (or an equivalent cert from another recognized agency like CMAS or BSAC) you're assumed by default - and expected! - to be able to plan and conduct an unsupervised open water dive, and to be able to evaluate whether or not your training qualifies you for unsupervised diving under the given conditions.

Not that those assumptions and expectations always are in line with reality, though...
 
Nitpick: Certified divers (excluding those holding a 'cert' like PADI Scuba Diver) don't need a DM or a guide.

In many places around the world, if you have a PADI OW cert (or an equivalent cert from another recognized agency like CMAS or BSAC) you're assumed by default - and expected! - to be able to plan and conduct an unsupervised open water dive, and to be able to evaluate whether or not your training qualifies you for unsupervised diving under the given conditions.

Not that those assumptions and expectations always are in line with reality, though...

while of course you're correct so is Goodfelow. In places like Thailand, The Maldives, I presume the Red Sea and others, the local authorities require you dive with a guide whatever your level. Although some operators do give some latitude if they deem you to be experienced enough and trust worthy. I've just come back from Thailand and my wife and I were required to descend with the guide and others in our jump group but then allowed to separate and do our own thing as long as we surfaced under a DSMB with 50 bar and observed the dive plan briefed to everyone (max depth and time)
 
Just curious: were the two of you in the water at the same time for the skills demo, or one at a time?

There were actually 4 people doing the DSD. I believe the other 2 people were actually certified, but this was their first dive post-cert and they wanted to do it as a DSD because they didn't have confidence in themselves and their Bahamas resort OW training.

Anyway, all 4 of us were in the water. The DM took each of us below the surface one at a time to demo our skills while the rest floated on the surface. Then we all descended on a buoy line.
 
I got started diving with a PADI Discover Scuba experience. I was at a rustic resort where the activities included sea kayaking and snorkeling. I was skeptical of my ability to learn to remove and replace my mask under water, which I knew to be a requirement of certification, but I wanted to find out what scuba was like.

In shallow water from the beach next to the pier I learned some simple skills, such as partial flooding and then clearing the mask, etc, and then we went out on the boat and dived to 40 feet. I had issues with seasickness and equalizing, so it was not until several days later that I decided to continue.

The Discover Scuba experience was counted as the first day of a 4-day OW class, each day having a shallow-water and a deep water component. I could, in hindsight, have saved some time at the resort if I'd done the classroom and shallow-water classes in a pool at home before going to the resort, but I needed to do the Discover Scuba before I knew if I really wanted to get certified. So for me, it was all good.

When I went back for day 2 of the course, the seas were not quite as rough, and I had less difficulty equalizing, but one lesson I learned is that I cannot dive in rough water because I'll be too seasick to enjoy it by the time I get to the dive site.

I'd encourage anyone who knows they want to learn to dive to take the pool and classroom classes at home before their trip, and then they can probably do the open water classes in a couple of days, or a couple of hours a day for four days.

But someone who is interested, but unsure whether they really want to do it, might do well to start with Discover Scuba as a way to experience what it's like to scuba dive, and then continue with the full course, of which they'll now have done the first quarter, if they enjoy it. Where I got certified, Discover Scuba was really the first day of the 4-day OW course.
 
I agree that a DSD is a great way to find out if you really want to get certified. However, I would totally recommend doing the full cert course at home, if you can, before going to a vacation destination where you want to dive. There are two reasons for this:

- it will almost certainly cost you more (a fair bit more) to do the course at home and referral dives at your destination. When I looked into it, pretty much every place I checked would result in paying a total of almost twice as much as if I just did it all with one shop (whether the shop was at home or at the destination). And I definitely would not want to spend part of my resort vacation sitting in a classroom for scuba lessons.

- you'll spend dive time at your destination doing skills instead of diving to see the things you want to see. You'll have 4 open water dives to complete as part of your certification. If you wait to do them as referral dives, that will be 4 dives that you spend getting instruction and practicing skills, instead of 4 dives seeing cool stuff. You may get to actually see some cool stuff as part of each of those 4 dives, or you may not. I imagine that would depend a lot on your instructor and how many students are part of your group.

Also, just as another example, I really wanted to dive in Molokini, off Maui, when I went. For that, you have to be a fully certified diver. You cannot dive there as part of your OW certification course, or as a Discovery Dive. So, I didn't get to dive there. Yet.
 
Just wondering if I am just a tourist in the Caribbean and want to scuba dive. Can I do it without being certified ? Just curious. Thoughts ?

Just wondering why you are not considering snorkeling/freediving for this trip through the Caribbean? Most likely, any place you would do a DSD dive in is less than 30 feet deep anyway....and 10 to 20 feet deep is very easy to snorkel.
Moreover, as a snorkeler/freediver you can be building skills and become self-competent, as well as learn excellent water skills and get to move around more like a fish.....as a DSD diver, you place yourself totally into the hands of an instructor....some capable of this, some not ( arguably), YOU learn little about diving or getting around properly, and you become a poster child for Disney world Adventures, instead of REAL Adventures you do yourself--with self sufficiency. In other words, a person that thinks tandem sky diving with an instructor is really sky diving or an adventure...to me that is almost as much of a joke as bungie jumping ( Not a real sport--you don't have to know, or do, anything).

As a snorkeler/freediver, you can have some awesome adventures in the Caribbean, and be building skills that would provide you with huge advantages for some later OW Scuba cert, over your Evil Twin that went the DSD route :)
 
It was just out of the blue question. I am getting certified on March.
 
I know it is silly to make the 20th post of a thread a warning to other posters to read at least a few of the posts before offering advice. The people who quickly read the first post of a thread and then write a hurried response will not read this warning that is intended for them.

By the 4th post, it was clearly established that the OP was not making plans for himself. It was established that he is getting certified himself, and he was wondering how a friend who was not certified could have already had 8 dive experiences. His question was thoroughly answered at that point.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom