10 year old: Best dive location for Junior Open Water Certificate?

[caz777]

Heya,

My daughter is 10year old and are very interested in getting her Junior Open Water Certificate. The plan is to do it this summer on a vacation trip.

But what are the most suitabale locations for a kid to both get Junior Open Water Certification, but also with the most interesting dives (shallow, less than 12 meter)?

We are located in Central Europe and plan on doing a 2-week trip with approx. 1 week allocated to scuba, and the other week to topside stuff (culture/nature/whatever). So we can travel a fair distance.

What we have considered sofar (mainly for topside activities):
- Sri Lanka
- Zanzibar (Tanzania)
- Playa del Carmen (Mexico)

What are your recommendations on dive locations with multiple great very shallow dives for a new child-diver?

 

[Jehle]

Hi!
My son was certified in Grand Cayman with Ocean Frontiers.
They did a great job with him and the dive sites were perfect for him.
If you are in Europe, Greece is a place with very easy and shallow dives. We have been to Thasos, Sarti, and Kavos (all on the mainland more or less and easy to drive to). You won't get the abundancy there that you'll get other places, but my son enjoyed learning how to night dive there knowing that there aren't big things with teeth lurking in the dark.
Good luck to her and to you!
Having my son as a dive buddy has been an amazing experience for us and a thing we do together for bonding.

 

[Angelo Farina]

My son was already OW, and was certfied Junior OW at Pro Dive Cairns, on the Great Barrier, Australia.
Not close to home, but we did stay there for one month and we did many other things.
It was a 3-days LOB featuring a total of 10 dives, the first 5 were for being certified, the others were normal recreational dives with a max depth of 30m approximately.
My son was 12 years old, and he was the younger on the boat.
Other divers were worried of having him on board, considering him too young, but after a few dives they understood that it was no problem.
The instructor was simply great... Very patient explaining everything slowly, also considering the language barrier (my son was not very fluent in English at the time)
The first dives were in transparent and calm water, no current ,12 meters max, so everything was easy and within his previous OW training and experience.
Dive 4 was already a "deep" dive down to 30m, so a bit more difficult. But my son did already dive to 24-24 m in Sardinia (at Capo Caccia) one year before, so in warm water this appeared a reasonable extension. The most difficult one was the night dive, which did also include the orienteering test with the compass. After dinner they discharged in water the remainings, so something as 20 sharks started rotating around the boat, and we had to dive in the middle of them. And the orienterring part was a square of 50m per side, which did mean swimming exactly THROUG the sharks, then turn 90 degrees, swim other 50 meters, turn again, and so on, coming back under the boat at the end.
This was really thrilling, my son had to pass at a couple of meters from 3-meters long sharks who were smelling him for evaluating if he was edible or not...
In the end everything was fine, and after this experience my son was ready for doing anything that also I, my wife, and our other older son can do.
For a 10 years old, not yet OW certified, I would not recommend this experience, but keep it in mind in a couple of years...

 

[caz777]

@Jehle
Cheers. Grand Cayman has also been a bit on the radar, though whether it is interesting enough topside I am unsure of...but could just go somewhere else for topside for half the trip in that case.

Greece is actually also an interesting option. Not sure I would go in July there though....But could be a nice spring location.

@Angelo Farina
Haha that sounds like an epic orientation excercise. If you still want to go in the water after that as a kid, then you are a diver for life To be completely honest I would probably have been a bit wary of doing that during my OW certification many years ago (even though I was mid 20s at the time)

 

[Doc]

On a slightly different note-

“most interesting dives”
+”great …. dives”
≠Junior OW

The training environment for JOW should always be a sand bottom moonscape. This is why pools are really perfect for the confined water portion, the OW is really not much different.

During training and initial dives, Kids are so busy diving, the sight of one or two fish darting by will barely register. They might remember “rocks”.

You mention topside ‘stuff/culture’, thus i will not further embarrass the Ameri-centric nature of Scuba Board by suggesting the Caribbean. You have LOTS of destinations in your Longitude with cheaper airfare that actually do have - stuff… and culture.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

@caz777

If you are in Central Europe, you should consider Greece. Hard to beat the topside activities, great viz, and lots of sand.

There are some top notch instructors who teach fully neutrally buoyant and trimmed. There's one woman instructor who produces amazing results that I could look up for you.

 

[rick00001967]

whether it is allowed by standards or not, a ten yr old is too young to be diving. just my opinion.

 

[Doc]

whether it is allowed by standards or not, a ten yr old is too young to be diving. just my opinion.

I started at 6 years old. Just my fact.

Back to OP, now?

 

[kinoons]

I think it varies from 10 year old to ten year old.

My daughter is 10, and while adventurous, is still responsible. She’s good at understanding why we do things the way we do when skiing, hiking, flying, and now diving.

My daughter got certified at blue hole in Santa Rosa, NM. Basically just a 90 ft hole in the desert. Not a lot to see, so she could concentrate on just diving.

Our first real open water test will be shore diving on Maui. I’ll be watching her like a hawk, and hopefully she’ll have some fun looking at fish and turtles.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I started at 6 years old. Just my fact.

Back to OP, now?

JYC taught Fabien when he was 4