PADI Open Water Diver

When you finish, you are a certified diver with a card recognised all over the world. You can buy scuba equipment and dive to 18 m with your own or rented kit, without an instructor or guide, just with a buddy. At new sites, most divers still prefer a guide.

Millions of people have learned to dive and explore the underwater world through this course.

PADI Open Water Diver is performance-based. It takes as long as you need to understand and absorb the material, get comfortable in the water and perform the skills with ease.

The course has three modules that build on each other: theory, pool and open water.

Sessions take place later in the day, usually in the evening, to fit around your working week. The manual has 5 sections, and classroom teaching is supported by a video presentation that makes learning easier.

Equipment

What SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) equipment is made of. Why we need a buoyancy compensator and weights at the same time. Why the mask covers your nose and how to equalise. Wetsuits versus dry suits. What a regulator is and how it works. Why cylinders hold compressed air, not oxygen. How to choose and look after your kit.

Dive physics

How gases behave under water pressure and how they affect us. Buoyancy. How sight and hearing change underwater. Different diving environments.

Environment and safety

Aquatic life, and how to prevent or deal with a problem.

Planning

Dive tables, the dive computer, and using a compass for simple navigation.

Each section ends with a review with your instructor. Theory closes with a 50-question final exam on the most important topics.

Buoyancy skills teach you to move underwater without touching the bottom or rising to the surface. You practise things you will use on every dive: clearing a fogged mask underwater, or taking the regulator out of your mouth to smile for a photo and recovering it safely.

• Assembling and disassembling your kit, and washing, drying, transporting and storing it.
• Weighting yourself correctly and dropping weights in an emergency for a safe ascent.
• What to do if you run out of air: your buddy's alternate air source or a controlled swimming ascent.
• What to do about a cramp, and much more.

If you are comfortable in the water, these skills are usually mastered in no more than two pool sessions.

You repeat the pool skills in the natural environment, among fish, crabs and shells. These dives are not all work: the first part is for settling in and skills, the second for exploring the life of the Black Sea.

Weather permitting, the first two dives are usually close to shore, entering from the beach, to a maximum of 6-7 m. The last two are from the boat in deeper water, to a maximum of 18 m. There you refine your buoyancy, build confidence and see different marine life from what lives near the shore.

By the end of the course you can plan and make a dive with a buddy, safely.

Theory is covered in two classroom sessions, followed by pool dives in Bucharest. It is designed for anyone heading on a holiday somewhere warm who wants the PADI card without spending precious holiday time in a classroom. Call us for details.