PADI (The Professional Association of Dive Instructors) has an extremely effective and well-developed instructional system with over 30 of its courses being recognized for college credit by the American Council on Education (ACE). PADI courses have also been recognized for school credit in Canada; Australia; and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

 

Most PADI courses involve self-paced knowledge development and in-water sessions either in swimming pools or open water, or both. The knowledge development is done in your own time using a manual (textbook) or via eLearning. Either way, we’ll meet periodically to discuss the material and ensure that you understand it all—usually in conjunction with the swimming pool or open water sessions.

 

Open Water Diver

PADI’s Open Water Diver course is the entry-level course to your future scuba diving adventures. With this certification, your experience is limited, so there are some restrictions on what sort of dives you should undertake, but essentially you can continue to dive independently in the local area or go on vacation, show your certification card, rent gear and go diving.

 

You have various paths to get to this point. You can start with us, complete all the requirements and get certified right here. You can start here and do the knowledge development and pool sessions and, if it happens to be February and the water just doesn’t look all that inviting, you can head south and complete the open water dives somewhere much warmer with a beach to relax on afterward. Because all PADI instructors are teaching the same course, in the same order, with the same materials, you can start here and complete the course pretty much anywhere in the world that you want. Learn more.

 

Advanced Open Water

You have your Open Water Diver certification, so now what? You go diving of course! But maybe you are looking at the river and thinking “that current looks strong, I wonder if you can dive in that?” or “I wonder what it is like down there at night?” or “I wonder what it is like to go deeper?” or maybe you are not quite the risk taker adrenaline junkie you were once upon a time and you just think that it would be good to learn a little more and do a few more dives with an instructor before you venture forth on your own. If any of this sounds like you, it’s time to enroll in the Advanced Diver course. There is some independent knowledge development and then five different open water dives—we can select from a long list of possible dives. At the end you have some new skills, a little more experience, and more confidence to continue diving. Learn more.

 

Rescue Diver

At South Mountain Scuba we place a strong emphasis on diver safety, so this is one of our favorite courses. Here you learn not only how to help other divers in difficulty, but you learn how to help yourself—how to deal with problems that may arise and, maybe more importantly, how to recognize potential issues before they happen and act to make sure they don’t become an actual problem.

 

Going from not being a diver to getting your open water certification was a huge step. Beyond that there are numerous courses that increase your skill levels, experience and confidence, but in a lot of ways these increases are incremental.  Rescue Diver, however, is one of those courses that give you another leap forward.  It isn’t that it is difficult, it simply expands your knowledge and confidence much more than many other courses. Learn more.

 

In the same vein, while we don’t teach it here, if you have reached this point you may want to think about a trip to central Florida and taking a Cavern Diving course. This isn’t as serious as diving into a cave—you can always see daylight and there is an unobstructed route to the surface—but you learn a huge array of new skills and build much better buoyancy control. Even if you never dive in a cavern again, you can’t help coming out of this course a much better diver than you went in.

 

PADI also has a large array of specialty courses to develop your skills and broaden your experience of different dive environments. Talk to us about:

 

Deep Diver: Learn more about diving beyond the 60’ limit of your open water certification. Prepare yourself for deeper dives and learn about gas management and more about dive planning.

 

Enriched Air (Nitrox):  Learn how you can use gas mixtures with higher oxygen concentrations to extend your bottom time or build a greater safety margin in your regular dive profiles.

 

If you want to focus on your buoyancy skills but don’t fancy cavern diving, think about joining us for a Peak Performance Buoyancy course.

 

And, for those wanting to combine their diving with learning more about the marine environment and what you can do to help preserve it, we also offer the PADI AWARE Specialty and Coral Reef Conservation.

 

And now, if you have realized that diving really is your life, maybe its time to think about turning pro. Talk to us about the PADI Divemaster course—PADI’s entry level professional certification and the first step in a career in diving.