New to Scuba, Unsure about Cost

[Masta_Ace]

Hello Everyone,

A dream of mine is to scuba with a whale shark in Mexico this December, but I need to be certified. I went to the scuba
center in my city today and we went through what it would take for me to get me complete certification and it equates to
around $850-1000. Is this right? The in-class sessions were almost $300.


I was thinking that couldn't I just do the PADI E-Learner for $190, and the open water dives for another $300 to become
certified? And save the $100 or so dollars.


Or is this price reasonable and I'm just cheap.

 

[herman]

Welcome to the board.
It somewhat depends on what you are getting. For just the cert, $800+ is way high but most places require you to have your own "personal" gear- mask/fins/booties/snorkle and in some cases wetsuit and/or weights. Those items can easily run $250 (m/f/s) and another $250-300 for a wetsuit. So IF you are getting it all, Class for $400ish, m/f/s for $250 and a wetsuit for $300 it could easily end up costing $800-1000. Unless they require you to buy the personal items from them....in which case find another shop..you can always buy used gear or maybe borrow some from someone you know for the class.

Never done it but from what I understand you usually snorkle with whale sharks anyway so you really don't need a dive cert for that.

 

[oly5050user]

elearning only replaces what traditional learning is in a classroom with reading/dvd /homework/quiz/exam. you still need to do a quick review exam of less than 20 questions with an instructor and complete confined water work. The 4 required ow dives for certification is NOT where the instructor is to teach you,but where you APPLY what you learned at the pool, in ow water. Proper training can mean an enjoyable fantastic time on/in the water from being comfortable with your skills and your gear OR-- improper training/no training can scare the crap out of you and may even KILL you. Diving is a safe activity,but must be conducted by trained,knowledgeable people.
Realistically the people who told you $850-$1000 were very honest with you and are correct. After paying for the course itself(academic/confined water) the 4 ow training dives,learing materials(either traditional text and dvd-cost $95. or elearning) any required personal gear (considered a minimal investment, not like a regulator/bcd/computer) as mask,fins ,snorkel,boots, rentals, etc..entrance fees to quarry or boat fees you can easily spend that much and more.Once you are certified you will discover that the training costs can be the least expensive part of the activity.I for one think the fees are too cheap as it is. Should be at least double what the rate is now.Figure out the hours involved and it suddenly becomes very clear why it costs what it does.On a per hour basis ,training is too cheap. Again once you are certified and have your own gear scuba can be as inexpensive,free shore diving where available and the cost to get there and a air fill,or as expensive as you want with boat fees,nitrox or trimix fills,airfare to get there.

 

[TSandM]

The e-learning gives you the academic side of diving, but there is a lot to learn about actually managing the equipment and your buoyancy, and you begin that with the pool sessions. Some confined water training is critical to learning to dive, and my opinion is that the more of it you get, the better off you are.

The shop I sometimes DM for charges about $250 for the OW class, but another $50 for the PIC (the paperwork/photo/form which has to be submitted for the cert card) and you buy your own materials, which I think is another $75 or so. They also require you to buy your own mask, fins, snorkel, booties and gloves, which can run anywhere from $300 to $500, depending on what you buy. We have no boat charges or facility fees, so I suppose you could get through certification for about $600 or so, if you were cautious with your purchases. I think your shop was being honest with you.

As already stated, most of the whale shark operations (at least the ones off Cancun) are just snorkeling, so you could very likely do that without getting scuba certified. Although why someone wouldn't want to get certified and join the rest of us in something that's this much fun is beyond me!

 

[Masta_Ace]

I have more questions. Cost is a factor for me (a large one at that), myself being a university student. I only get about one
opportunity to go on vacation a year, typically the Carribean. This means that is my only time to get out and scuba if I do get my cert. Are there cheap places where I can just visit and go diving? Because if I do get this cert, thats a big investment for me right now. And I don't want to go diving 4 times a year if I get it, I want to go more.

 

[windapp]

You never save money on E-Learning, or any other divided learning scheme. Spend $200 on E-Learning - save $100 off your course.... You only do E-Learning or referral diving for convenience. You end up paying for it. Plan on paying minimum $2000 in your first year of diving if you actually want to do some decent diving after your certification. Each dive day anywhere costs minimum $100.00 if you are renting, and only in the cheepest places. My bare-minimum equipment, purchased second hand at rock-bottom prices (including a $10.00 used wetsuit and not including my compass or other non-minimum equipment) cost $925.00.

And the $300 for the classroom sessions probably includes your pool sessions. Not including wetsuit rentals,"soft" equipment,quarry admission, or airfills 2-4, my local dive shop charges as follows:

$375 - Full Course
$299 - Academic and Pool
$175 - Only Pool
$175 - Open Water Only
Pool Training and Open Water $329.00

Savings = $46.00 for a $200 e-learning course.

The reason why is that they are already doing the academic stuff for the other divers on the nights they do the pool sessions. The $46.00 is for the book.

 

[lowtech]

A lot of locals shore dive in the ocean, quarries, lakes, rivers etc...
This can be a lot cheaper if you have your own gear.
You may want to check out the local forums for your area to get information on the local dive sites.

FYI. Scuba diving is hard to do on a tight budget.

 

[Flintino]

I am finishing my certification with my open water dives this coming weekend and have all of my gear. I am moving to Manitoba so i thought I would get my gear here in the states since it would probably be cheaper. I, like you do not have much money. My wife and I just recently graduated college and since she is Canadian I was the only one working and paying for both of our tuitions. So I definitely feel ya.

I bought my books 2 months before I even started getting training (for $50) The shop where I was going to go to was a 5 star PADI training center, and this other dive shop I ended up going to because of scheduling conflicts with the nice 5 star PADI training center, has been some trouble. I figured I would be able to get certified in about 5 days, because the "nice" place had a specific schedule. The "cheap" place was about $100 cheaper but they only showed when you started the course. I started training in the beginning of June....it is now July 14, and hopefully they wont cancel the OW dives

So as for getting your training, you may be able to get a deal like I did. Which is mostly fine except for the waiting period. However this should throw some flags up as well. I am not sure what standards the training is supposed to be up to, however I feel like I did not get adequate enough instruction in the pool. There were a lot of little things that were missing or not instructed according to the book, when we did them for real. So yea the most important thing from what I have learned so far is study the book really well and think how it works, to make sure that you do get taught everything when it comes down to breathing in water.

Ok as for gear, I have managed to find enough deals over the past 1.5 months to get all of my gear for diving in Canada *maybe not ice* for quite a cheap sum.

I did take a risk in this though, because I bought some of the things off of Ebay.

I got 2 Sherwood Magnum Blizzard 2nd stages: $70 total w/ hoses +$30 servicing for both total= $100
Sherwood Magnum 1st Stage: *I got this here on scubaboard forums and was just serviced* $120
- came with a sherwood magnum 2nd stage as well
BCD bought a new low end BCD from LDS for $50
Steel Scuba tank from ebay: $90
-gotta be careful with these its actually a better bet to just buy an aluminum one new from your dive shop I just got this because I wanted the extra weight.
Hydro+Visual:$40
7mm Scubapro Semi-Dry suit *worn 4 times* $50
Gauges *pressure, compass, depth* used twice looks new $65

Total so far is $515 without mask snorkel fins and this included servicing everything.

Mask $34 from leisurepro
snorkel $12 leisurepro
fins+boots $140 from the nice LDS got some nice Aeris Velocity fins and some 6mm hardsole boots.

Total cost of training *not including gas+getting to dive site fees* $240.

So for a grand total of $941 I acquired almost all of my gear and got the training. So it is possible, but you will take a gamble. I got really lucky to get stuff that was in great condition and that it was serviceable.

 

[TSandM]

Masta Ace, one of the great things about diving is that you can do it anywhere there is water . . . well, at least, water bigger than a bathtub, although there used to be a photo of SparticleBrane in his tub in his doubles My guess is that, if you hook up with a local dive shop to get certified, they'll be able to tell you where people in your area go to dive. It might be a lake, quarry or river, but it's very unlikely that there is NOWHERE locally that you can dive.

When we got certified, we were told that the upfront costs of diving were high, but once you owned your equipment, it didn't cost much to keep diving. Although we are living proof that that's not true, the money we spent was on more education and upgrading the equipment we had bought to something we liked better. We could very well have continued diving with what we had, and at that point, a shore dive would have cost us $10. It's hard to find a half day's entertainment anywhere for $10 . . .

 

[fjpatrum]

You can certainly find cheaper options than that, but you didn't mention whether that cost included any equipment, which will add to overall cost. If you have to do boat dives rather than shore dives for your checkout dives, that could add to cost. My total cost, just for class time and dives was around 480 $US including equipment rental costs etc. I already owned my own "personal gear" (mask fins snorkel etc) so didn't have to factor that into my price. Most dive shops I've seen try to sell you $50 worth of personal gear for $300 when you take OW classes so that may be a significant portion of the cost they're quoting. Buy your fins, mask and snorkel used and save yourself a bunch of money since it's a good likelihood you'll want to replace all of those (or get rid of them) down the line anyway.