Raleigh SCUBA Training:
Everything You Need To Know

Overview

SCUBA diving is an amazing sport that acts as a gateway to explore the underwater world, meet and learn more about marine life, relax in a therapeutic environment, and see a piece of the world that few other people will ever see. It is imperative to undergo proper training and certification to learn how to dive safely and efficiently. SCUBA training is not just about learning the equipment, but also about learning proper techniques, managing risk, solving problems underwater, and how to react properly in an emergency.

This article will convey the basics of SCUBA training, the process, benefits, and different courses available for divers at different levels.

Why Scuba Training is Essential

SCUBA diving presents certain risks that demand that a diver have skills and preparation to handle correctly. The underwater world is completely different from life above the surface. Divers will face challenges of dealing with water pressure at depth, controlling buoyancy, communicating underwater, and navigating underwater. Great training will ensure that a diver understands the challenges of the underwater environment and that they have the skills and knowledge to respond to any challenge that comes up underwater. The primary goals of SCUBA training are:

Safety: Reducing the risk of decompression sickness, drowning, and equipment failure by understanding challenges and proper response to emergencies.
Skill Development: Learning how to use and maintain equipment, buoyancy control, underwater navigation, and responding to emergencies underwater.
Environmental Awareness: Understanding the underwater environment and how we can preserve its beauty for years to come through conservation.

SCUBA presents inherent risks that are not present at the surface, however, anyone can overcome this risk by learning the principles of safe diving and applying them on every dive. Learning from a qualified instructor and organization are key to success as a SCUBA diver for years to come.

The Basics of Scuba Training

The typical SCUBA training consists of classroom or online training, and hands-on practical training. These sessions are broken down into three standard training components:

Classroom Sessions: learning dive theory that covers the basic principles of diving, including physics, physiology, and safety protocols. This portion can be held in a classroom setting, or from the comfort of the students home and at their own pace via elearning.
Confined Water Training: Hands-on skills training in a controlled area like a pool or a body of water that meets certain criteria to be considered a confined water training location. This is where divers learn skills like clearing water from their mask and recovering a lost regulator.
Open Water Dives: Real-world diving experience in an open water environment. This could be in a quarry, lake, ocean, spring, or any other large body of water that meets the training requirements to ensure a good learning experience for divers. This is where students demonstrate the skills that they learned in the pool, solidifying skills and proving their proficiency as a diver.

Each phase of training will increase the divers knowledge, confidence, and competence as a diver, and make sure that all divers are prepared to dive safely without professional supervision.

Certification Agencies and Levels of Training

Several organizations offer SCUBA certification programs, with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) being the most widely recognized training organization. All major training organizations teach the same skills and standards that are agreed upon by an international regulatory body, they only differ in the quality of training materials. The most important thing is finding a great instructor and a dive center with a good reputation in the community.

PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors)

PADI is one of the largest and most popular scuba certification agencies, offering a range of courses for divers at every level. Here are a few of the courses offered by PADI:

Open Water Diver: This is the beginner certification course. It usually takes three to four days and provides the basics of scuba and all the skills necessary to dive safely to a depth as deep as sixty feet.
Advanced Open Water Diver: The Advanced open water course builds on the foundation of open water where divers will learn to do more advanced skills while maintaining a grip on the basics they learned in open water. Divers will be certified to dive as deep as one hundred feet after course completion.
Rescue Diver: This is one of the most challenging and rewarding courses out there. Divers will learn to react appropriately to rescue divers in distress, both at the surface, and underwater.
Divemaster: Divemaster is a very in depth learning process, that consists of an internship that includes classroom learning and practical training sessions to give the diver everything needed to be a professional diver.
Instructor: The highest level of certification, allowing individuals to teach and certify new divers.

Regardless of the certification agency, all reputable training programs adhere to strict standards to ensure divers can operate safely and confidently, however, we are admittedly partial to PADI because of the great training materials that they offer for student divers, and instructors.

What to Expect During SCUBA Training

The unknown of learning to dive can seem scary at first, but it will be an enjoyable and rewarding experience once you take that first step and plunge into the certification course Heres what you can expect at each stage of training.

Classroom/Online Learning

The theoretical portion of SCUBA training involves understanding the science behind diving. Here are a few of the topics you will learn:

Pressure and Depth: While descending, the pressure on the body increases, learning to manage air spaces affected by this is key to preventing injuries.
Breathing and Equalization: Divers will learn how to properly breathe underwater and how to equalize the pressure in their ears and sinuses to prevent injury and discomfort.
Dive Planning: Divers will learn how to account for dive times, gas supply management, thermal protection, and avoiding decompression sickness, among other planning considerations.
Safety Protocols: Divers will learn how to prevent emergencies, and what to do if they ever find themselves in an emergency situation. This will include sharing air, handling equipment malfunction, and how to safely ascend after a dive.

Confined Water Training

Confined water training will be conducted in a controlled environment to clear the students mind so they can concentrate on the skills being learned. Divers will achieve skills mastery on several skills at this point in their training. Here are a few skills covered during confined water sessions:

Removing and replacing your gear: Properly putting on gear and taking it off. This will be done on the surface before and after dives, and also underwater to fix any gear issues that may occur during a dive.
Mask Clearing: Learning to remove water from the mask when it floods. Students will begin with a partial flood, then a full flood, and then a mask removal and replacement to ensure skill mastery.
Buoyancy Control: Learning to adjust your breathing and equipment to become neutrally buoyant to achieve a hovering effect while diving. This will ensure less energy and air expended, and also preserve the marine environment when divers arent crashing into the bottom and damaging sensative organisms.
Buddy Breathing: Practicing how to share air with a dive buddy in an out of air emergency.

Open Water Training

The final portion of training will occur in a bigger body of water where students will conduct real world dives while demonstrating the skills that they have already mastered in a controlled environment with their instructor and classmates. Here’s what to expect:

Dive Planning and Execution: Planning each dive by checking gear, checking weather and water conditions, determining depth limits, time limits, gas management, and a plan for contingencies.
Skill Practice: Repeating essential skills like mask clearing, buoyancy control, and emergency procedures while diving in a less controlled environment.
Exploration: There will be a lot of focus on skill perfection, but divers have a portion of every open water dive where they simply dive and explore the environment safely and efficiently with their instructor and classmates.

The Benefits of Scuba Training

While the primary benefit of scuba training is safety, there are several other advantages to becoming a certified diver:

Access to Incredible Experiences: SCUBA certification opens the door to an entire world to explore and experience. Most humans will never lay eyes on underwater marine life in their own environment. SCUBA is the key to those experiences.
Confidence and Skill Development: Certification builds confidence along the way, and gives the necessary skills to dive safely in many environments.
Physical and Mental Benefits: SCUBA has been proven to have amazing affects physically and mentally on divers. Our lead instructor, Christian, says that a thirty-minute dive gives him the same mental health benefits as a one-week vacation.
Environmental Awareness: Divers take ownership of the incredible underwater world that they learn to love and become champions on behalf of marine life and underwater history preservation.

Conclusion

SCUBA training is a must-do for anyone who wants to study and explore the underwater world. Certification will ensure that divers have what it takes to dive safely, confidently, and responsibly. Whether you are a beginner or a veteran diver, there are always courses to continue learning and improving in underwater exploration. By investing in quality training, divers can safely explore marine environments and protect our oceans along the way.

If you are ready to start your underwater journey in Atlantic Beach, or just have a few more questions about training feel free to reach out today via phone or email.

phone: 252-665-1841

email: encounterscuba@gmail.com

Meet our team

Raleigh SCUBA Training: Everything You Need To Know