I live near a dive park and I was NAUI certified this summer as a Basic Diver. My father has always wanted to go SCUBA diving but never has and he just doesn't have the time to take classes. Is there anyway he can obtain a passport or go diving as my buddy without him getting certified?
It's definitely not advisable. As others have said, there are no "scuba police" and you are free to do what you will.
However, as I'm sure you've learned in OW class, there's a lot of things you can do underwater that can get you seriously hurt or even killed. Scuba instructors go through a lot of training in order to be able to cover all the information a brand new diver needs to know, and while I'm sure you've got a good grasp of the information, you probably don't have enough training or knowledge to be able to teach it effectively. For example, I start IV lines every day, but when I have a brand new paramedic student riding along, and I find myself having to explain how to start an IV, I usually wind up getting all tongue tied...it's a lot harder to teach than it looks!
Plus, it's hard to determine how someone will react underwater until they're actually underwater....instructors are trained to deal with a panicking diver and bring them to the surface safely, whereas that really isn't covered in your average OW course.
When I decided I wanted to learn to scuba dive, one of my coworkers offered to take me out a friend's pool and let me use his scuba gear, just to see if it was something I wanted to pursue. My friend is OW certified with a fair amount of experience, but he isn't an instructor. When he explained how to use the BC, I'm sure he explained it correctly, but what I heard was "inflate to go up, and deflate to go down". I was about 10 feet down in the deep end of the pool, and I decided to surface, so I pushed the "up" button, and did a Polaris missile impression! Just by sheer luck, I wasn't holding my breath, as the consequences could have been deadly. Naturally, he freaked out, because he thought he killed me, I freaked out from seeing him freak out, and I did my best to climb out of the water onto his head! Once everyone got calmed down, it was fine, but it could have been a really bad situation. And that was just in a 10 foot deep pool! Things could have been really, really bad had we done that in the lake like we originally planned.
If your dad is interested in scuba diving, you should check your local dive shops or the dive park and see if an instructor is willing to do a "discover scuba" experience. It only takes a couple of hours and allows him to try scuba diving under the watchful eye of an instructor in a confined water or shallow water setting. Many instructors will do it for free or fairly cheap in the hopes that you sign up for OW training. If he likes it, then I'm sure you can schedule classes for him. When I got certified, I had to schedule classes around my 24/48 schedule, so I found a private instructor (not affiliated with a shop) who had a similar schedule, and that worked out well.
Anyways, hope this helps!
PADI Discover Scuba/Discover Scuba Diving
