How to Start Scuba Diving

By Lois Friedland, About.com

At some resorts scuba divers can just walk offshore, sink downward 30- to 40-feet and be in a coral garden or swimming through a school of fish. Once you’ve learned to scuba dive, you can
also arrange to swim with dolphins in the ocean or protected bays, and even take a highly structured dive with the sharks. But before you start scuba diving alongside coral walls that are 90-feet deep, or with dolphins or sharks, there's a lot you need to learn. Here’s an quick primer outlining how to get started.

Ways to Get Certified for Scuba Diving

Take a scuba-diving course in a pool near your home, then follow your dive master’s suggestions for the open water dives required before you can be certified. The choice for an open water dive can range from the Blue Hole, a frigid “hole” that is part of a New Mexico cave system to the underwater coral gardens in the Cayman Islands and Bonaire in the Caribbean.

Wrap a vacation around getting certified. You can take a scuba diving course anywhere from the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean to Hawaii or Fiji, depending upon how exotic a trip you want to take. Keep in mind that if you plan to take the full certification course during a week-long trip, there probably won’t be much time to do anything else, including laze on the beach or explore the locale.

Take a resort course. These scuba diving certification courses range in length from one-day to three-day courses. If you take the shortest course, which usually includes a shallow dive in the afternoon, understand that your training is limited. Even the two- and three-day courses don’t give you as much experience in dealing with underwater emergencies as the full courses offered by PADI and NAUI, two of the major scuba-diving certification operations.

What’s it going to Cost?

The cost of a scuba-diving certification course varies considerably, depending upon where you are taking your certification course. If you take a course in a pool near your home the cost of getting to where you’re going to take an open-water dive for final certification will impact this price dramatically. The two- or three-day resort courses can cost several hundred dollars. Hiring a private tutor at a hotel to take a full certification course, which can take up to a week, is much more expensive. But, doing all of your book work sitting in a lounge chair beside the ocean is a really great way to study.

Where to Learn More

On the About.com scuba diving website, there's an excellent article by Jay Umbenhauer outlining questions to ask before you get certified. For specific details about learning where to get certified for scuba diving read how to get certified, by Clint Leung who is a NAUI certified Master and Rescue Scuba Diver.