Need assistance planning Gulf diving trip

[Scuba_RN]

Situation: 4-6 people (1 PADI Divemaster, 1+ PADI OW Cert, and 2+ newbies without a C card) are taking a trip to Corpus Christi/S. Padre May 26-27 and want to go diving on either one of those days.

Questions:
What local dive shops do you recommend? Do they rent equipment?
Are there dive shops willing to do "resort courses" for the newbies?
What dive sites are best for beginners, but yet an experienced diver would still enjoy? (Or divemaster just moved to Texas from Hawaii, so we don't want to scare her).
For this time of year, what is needed- 1, 3, 5mm; shorty or full, etc.

I have been searching online, but not having much luck and I don't have the time this week to spend researching this. Thanks in advance!

(Even if I can't find a dive shop that will take care of the newbies, I still need a recommendation for a dive shop because myself and the divemaster will be getting wet and everyone else can find something else to do. Evil, I know....but I have an addiction to tend to

 

[Mack Diver]

For Corpus Christi, you probably want to get with Copelands. They're the most established. If it's South padre, then I would recommend All American Diving. Tim O'leary has a great boat operation down there with a nice variety of dive sites. I'm not aware of any resort course at either location, so the newbies may get a discover scuba at best.

 

[chairmanTARAC]

Check out copelands and I would also check at Port Aransas for some charter operations

 

[hsnowden]

For South Padre, American Divig would be the best bet. You need to watch them on their prices. They just started a $10 fuel surcharge per trip. I just did a trip with them last weekend to one of the local off shore oil rigs. I was quite nice. If you can get on it, they have a trip out to a rig called "Little Adam". There you will see thousands of fish and three golilith (jewfish) grouper at around 120 ft. You can see what trips are going out when at their website.

www.divesouthpadre.com

I've got a lot of pictures from my past two trips with them you can view at the flick.com link in my sig.

I hope this was helpful