Just in case you didn’t know, scuba diving can be dangerous sport. The equipment used needs to be handled properly and as of today, we humans still can’t breath underwater without this equipment! So, before using scuba equipment or submersing in any water (even a swimming pool) you should seek training from a recognised instructor. This is the first of a five part post that will give non-divers an insight into what they will do when they learn to scuba dive.

Before we begin this I should point out 2 things. One, scuba is an acronym for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus and two, if I was to say I’m going diving many people would have visions of swimming pools and high dive boards. To avoid any confusion I always say scuba diving or scuba when referring to the underwater type.

Why Learn To Dive?

So if it’s a dangerous sport why would you want to learn to dive? It’s only dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing and with proper instruction you will know exactly what to do. How I like to describe it is that anyone can buy scuba equipment and jump in the sea but the dangerous start before you hit the bottom. You need to understand your maximum depth, how long your air supply will last, dangerous creatures you may encounter and the most important thing how to get back to the surface safely.

Beach holidays have always been a popular choice but so many people are now looking for something at little more exciting to do, except sit on the sand all day and scuba diving is the perfect answer.

When you first learn to scuba dive it will feel a little unnatural as your body gets used to the feeling of weightlessness, you will fight every little current that pushes you side ways and feel that your are forever out of balance. As time passes though you will so learn to enjoy this weightlessness and let that soft gentle current wave over you.

After you have completed the course you now know a new skill, woohoo!! This new skill can now be taken home with you and what you will find is that around the world, no matter how far you live from the sea, there will be a thriving scuba community. Just because you learnt to dive on holiday doesn’t mean you should only leave scuba diving to holiday times. Find that community and join it, they will have some fantastic dive spots that are not too far from your home.

So you now understand that you need training before you can scuba dive, that its an exciting sport that allows you to explore a relatively unseen world, and that its not only a holiday sport, now what? In part two of this post series I will talk about different training agencies and is it better to learn to scuba dive at home or on holiday?

If you liked this post please leave a comment or add my RSS feed to your bloglines.

Two of the more popular dive sites in Thailand, Hin Daeng & Hin Muang are usually dived on the same day due to their close proximity to each other. In fact they are so close you can swim from one to the other no problem. The names of these sites derive from the colour of the soft coral and anemaones found on them, Daeng in Thai means red and Muang means purple. As you approach these dive sites there is a little anti-climax as all you can see from the surface is a rock sticking 3m clear of the surface. If you have been diving around Phi Phi or the Bida Islands and enjoyed the scenery in between your dives then this will be a stark contrast for you.

Hin Daeng

The 3m rock mentioned above belongs to this site and as soon as you enter the water the anti-climax of your arrival at the dive site soon fades as you are confronted with a drop over 60m deep. This southern side of Hin Daeng is the steepest and deepest drop off in all Thailand’s dive sites and should only be attempetd by those more advanced divers. Coral life is a little sparse on this rock but this is not why you come to Hin Daeng and Hin Muang, its the pelagic life. When dive shops offer you the chance to see large paegics like Whale Sharks and Manta Rays this is most like th site to which they wil bring you. If the depth of 60m scares you then you can stay on the eastern side of the rock and swim about the rocky outcrops. This area has a maximum depth of about 40m or so and you can still see some amazing paeligcs like Batfish and Barracudda.

Hin Muang

This large rectangular shaped rock (200m long, only 20m wide) also drops off into deep waters but the most interesting part to this dive is usually in the shallow waters of 25m or less. In contarst to the relative barrennes of Hin Daeng the top of Hin Muang looks as though it’s covered in soft corals and anemone. In fact if you dive when there is a current it can be difficut to find a bare piece of rock to hold on to. Hin Muang is in my opinion the best place to spot and swim with large Manta Rays as the gentle giants seem to like to play with the divers bubles. Given your relative shallow diving you can stay and dive with them for longer as they slowly swoop above your head as your bubbles rise up. After watching them for some time me and some friends think that the bubbles must tickle the Mantas or give them some enjoyment because they activley seek out divers who have bubbles above them, unlike most other sea cretures who swim away from the bubbles.

Thailand has many great dive sites but these 2 are about the best for spotting large pelagics. The down side is the travel time from either Krabi or Phuket but the easy way to aviod this is to spend time on Koh Lanta. Dive operators from Krabi and Phuket usually only do these sites from a speed boat as this is the only way to get there and back in a day. My personal opion is that speed boats are not great dive vessels, but thats another topic. Your best option is Koh Lanta as it is the closest to Hin Daeng and Hin Muang and also has many other wonderfull dive sites clsoe to the island. Although you should be super advanced to dive these two rocks many other dive sites from Koh Lanta are more than suitable for the beginner. In fact one of the best dive sites to do PADI open awater courses is very near here.

I hope this post has given you a little insight into some Thailand dive sites and i look forward to bringing you more.

This is the third in a five part post about learning to dive. In the previous posts I have discussed why you should learn to dive, is one training agency better than another and is it better to learn to dive at home or when on holiday?

This post will go further into the actual course you would do. As I said in a previous post I‘ve been a PADI instructor for a number of years and have taught in both the UK and in Thailand. The breakdown I’m about to talk about is from a typical PADI Open Water Diver Course regardless if it takes 4 days, 4weeks or 4months, what you learn is exactly the same.

A PADI Open Water Diver Course (OWD) is the first level at which, after qualification, you can dive independent of a dive instructor or professional guide. With this in mind you can understand that you will learn a lot on this course and it’s not until your Rescue Diver course will the learning curve be so step.

The OWD course is split into 3 sections knowledge development, confined water and open water. When you first sign up for your course you’ll be handed a load of stuff some of which will not make any sense to you yet. The book however will be your first introduction to the world of scuba diving and will be the focus your academic training.

Knowledge Development

Most schools now opt for their customers to do independent study and monitor how much they read and understood the chapter. Depending on where you learn to dive you may also get a DVD or video to take home that talks about each chapter and shows you examples of what it’s talking about. Your answers to the knowledge developments are used for monitoring how well you understood the topic and if you get stuck then the instructor only needs to go over that one area instead of waffling on about stuff you already understand. Good huh!!!

The five knowledge developments are broken down like this

KD 1

• Buoyancy
• Comfortable Ascents
• Comfortable Descents
• Breathing Underwater

KD2

• Staying Warm
• Streamlining Yourself
• Diving Together

KD3

• What’s It Like Where We’ll We Diving?
• Care For Yourself
• Care For Others
• Solution Thinking Underwater
• Offshore Adventures

KD4

• Nitrogen Narcosis
• Decompression Sickness
• Dive Table Introduction
• Using The Recreational Dive Planner (RDP)

KD5

• Making Safety Stops
• Emergency Decompression
• Altitude Considerations for divers
• Finding a minimum surface interval
• Electronic dive planning

There is no time limit on these chapters but to proceed onto the confined water sections you must have completed the appropriate chapter in the book, for example to start confined water one you must have completed KD1. In theory this is great, in practise in a holiday resort it doesn’t work. You may find yourself doing 2 chapters then 3 confined water sessions or maybe only 1 chapter than all confined session in a day. This is something you will work out with your instructor.

Confined Water

To most people confined water would be a swimming pool but you may find your first training session to be in the sea. What is meant by confined water is swimming pool or open sea area that offers swimming pool like conditions in respect of clarity, calmness and depth. As you begin your training it should first be conducted in waters shallow enough to stand up in to build your confidence and ability then move on to water to deep to stand up in.

The confined water session are spilt into 5 parts, each taking the training a step further. This is a breakdown of some of the main things you will learn in each part.

CW1

• Scuba Equipment & How To Put It Together & Put It On Safely
• Breathing Underwater
• Hand Signals
• Recovering & Clearing A Regulator
• Clearing A Partially Flooded Mask
• Swimming Underwater
• Using Your Submersible Pressure Gauge
• Locating & Using An Alternate Air Source (AAS)
• Ascents From Deep Water

CW2

• Pre-Dive Safety Check
• Deep Water Entry & Controlled Descents
• Mask Removal, Replacement & Clearing
• Air Depletion Exercise
• Surface Swimming In Scuba Gear
• Snorkel Clearing
• Scuba Equipment Removal On The Surface

CW3

• Fin Pivots, Neutral Buoyancy Skills & Swimming
• Air Depletion & AAS Location & Use
• Free Flowing Regulator
• Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (CESA)

CW4

• Mask Removal & Swim, Replace & Clear Mask
• Neutral Buoyancy Skills & Swim
• Buddy Breathing

CW5

• Scuba Unit Removal & Replacement Underwater
• Scuba Unit Removal & Replacement On The Surface

Open Water Sessions

Now for the real fun parts with four dives in the open water. You are limited to only 2 training dives in any one day so these dives have to be conducted over 2 days. On your first day you will not go deeper than 12m and on the second day you will go no deeper than 18m. How these dives are conducted is where there is a big variation in the PADI courses around the world. Some will be done in fresh water quarry pits, some will be done from the shore of a quite bay, some from a busy beach or from a boat. What ever the location or type of water, there is still a standardised way in which the dives will be done.

The skills you trained for in the pool will now be practised again but this time in deeper waters but like the pool you will have time to get confident in your surroundings before you do any skills.

Ideally your first dive should only include skills that you would do in every dive anyway. The breakdown listed here is only what you may do on any specific dive and the actual dive you do the skill on may vary, so this is just an idea of what you may do.

OW1

• Equipment Preparation Putting It On & Adjustment
• Pre-Dive Safety Check (BWRAF)
• Entry Appropriate To Location
• Weight Check
• Controlled Descent & Swimming
• Ascent & Exit
• Logging The Dive

OW 2

• Buoyancy Control
• Partial & Complete Mask Flood & Clear
• Regulator Recovery & Clearing
• Alternate Air Source Use Stationary & Assisted Ascent
• Weight Removal At The Surface
• Snorkel/Regulator Exchange
• 25 m/yard Tired Diver Tow

OW 3

• Cramp Removal Self & Buddy
• 50 m/yard Straight Line Surface Swim With Compass
• Free Descent With Reference
• Buoyancy Control
• Complete Mask Flood & Clear
• Buddy Breathing
• Underwater Exploration
• Remove & Replace Weight System At The Surface
• Remove & Replace Scuba Unit At The Surface
• Debrief & Log Dive

Ow4

• Free Descent Without Reference
• Buoyancy Control
• Mask Removal, Replacement & Clearing
• Underwater Navigation With Compass
• CESA

Now you have the full breakdown of what you will do on your PADI Open Water Course you should be rushing out to book yours or start to look for dive operators at your next holiday destination. In the next post I will be talking about what to do after you have finished your course. Many people learn to dive on holiday and only ever do the four dives required for the course, so I’ll talk about what to do to get the best from your new skill.

Learn To Dive – Part 1 Why Learn To Dive?

Learn To Dive – Part 2 Where To Learn To Dive

Learn To Dive – Part 3 What Will I do On The Course