Independent Scuba

Review – PADI Open Water Diver

One of the things I would like to provide here at Independent Scuba is some sort of review of different Scuba Diving courses. For a beginner it is not obvious what a course contains and I also think that while many scuba diving courses are very good there are also plenty of examples of the opposite.

The most common course for all new divers is the PADI Open Water Diver. It is designed to teach divers to independently dive to a maximum depth of 18 metres. No previous experience is needed and most normally fit people will be able to meet the prerequisites as long as one is able to swim 200 metres.

Theory

The course has a relatively comprehensive section on basic dive theory. The material is as with most PADI material well written and most unnecessary information has been taken off the curriculum. Each chapter finishes with a knowledge review and the course finishes with a theoretical test of 50 questions. Passing score is 75% and here is one of the weaknesses of the course – it is simply too easy. Any normally gifted person will pass this test and it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to ask a little bit more of divers to be.

Pool training

The course contains 5 pool sessions or confined water sessions as PADI calls them. They are well thought out and focus on teaching a diver basic scuba skills. Often these sessions are bundled together to save time and I think that it is a common problem that students are passed a little bit too easily. The goal is that the student should master the skills and if that is achieved all is good. Not many unnecessary skills are included and the sequencing is relevant. After finishing all confined sessions the student will be pretty well off in the open water.

The Open Water Dives

The course includes 4 open water dives. The first two to max 12 metres and the last two to max 18 metres. While the thought of these dives is good I that it is too few to create a good diver. Here it is also very common to let students to the skills to quickly and dive to 6 metres for 20 minutes simply to meet the PADI standards. While this may be ok from a standards point of view it certainly does not help the students much. I think that a total bottom time for all Open Water dives of perhaps minimum 120 minutes would have been a good idea. That would ensure that the students get enough bottom time – something which is very crucial while learning.

Other reflections

Anyone doing this course should be aware that one is not a fully trained diver after completing it. Major bits concerning self rescue and general rescue diving are missing and the requirements are simply to lenient to create a really independent diver. That said – it is a good introduction and many people can become surprisingly good after only four dives. I strongly recommend doing 4-6 pleasure dives after attempting any other course simply to build more waterman-ship. PADI encourages students to go on and to the Advanced Open Water Diver course straight after but I personally think some more dives are more beneficial.

Overall impression

This is probably the best beginners course in the industry. The planning and the material is of high quality. The negative sides includes that the students are targeted with repeated selling which can be annoying. Many courses are also over commercialised which means that the standards are followed only to allow a student to get certified and it also means that the quality of the training is somewhat lost – more information about this can be found in my beginners guide to Scuba Diving. But all things said – PADI leads the way in diver training and with a bit of caution this is an excellent introduction to scuba diving.