PADI Experience Program
Discover Scuba Diving
The PADI Discover Scuba Diving program is your chance to breathe underwater in a fun and convenient environment (confined water area or swimming pool). It’s never been easier to try diving!
A PADI Instructor introduces you to scuba equipment – then you go diving! It is as easy as that. This experience may credit toward diver certification.
Have you always wondered what it’s like to breathe underwater?
If you want to try scuba diving, but aren’t quite ready to take the plunge into a certification course, Discover Scuba Diving is for you.
PADI dive shops offer this program either in a pool, off a beach or from a dive boat. You can try scuba close to home or while you’re on vacation at a dive destination. While not a scuba certification course, Discover Scuba Diving is a quick and easy introduction to what it takes to explore the underwater world.
To sign up for a PADI Discover Scuba Diving experience, you must be at least 10 years old. No prior experience with scuba diving is necessary, but you need to be in reasonable physical health.
Discover Scuba Diving Outline
Participants who view the Discover the Underwater World video prior to the experience receive information about basic equipment use, water safety, aquatic life and snorkeling destinations.
Key Standards
| Prerequsite | None |
| Minimum Age | 10 |
| Recommended time | 2 hours |
| Minimum open water training | None required (one recommended) |
Course Overview
-
Confined Pool Dives Skills
- New divers complete and sign the PADI Discover Scuba Diving brochure.
- Brief introduction and explanation of the use of a mask, fins, BCD, regulator, pressure gauge, exposure protection, weight system, alternate air source, etc.
- Review breathing rules and equalization techniques.
- Skills overview: regulator and mask clearing.
- How to put on and adjust students scuba equipment.
- Breathing underwater and swim around in shallow water. When comfortable continue tours in deeper water as appropriate.
- Debriefing
Optional Open Water Dives Skills
When you go on an open water dive, a PADI Instructor will introduce and have you practice the following skills in shallow water before taking you to a deeper underwater tour.
- Breathing underwater
- Regulator clearing
- Regulator recovery
- Mask clearing
- Equalization techniques
Your open water dive takes you as deep as 12 metres/40 feet! (Of course this depends on where you dive.) The Discover Scuba Diving experience is a great way to get a head start on your PADI Scuba Diver or Open Water Diver certification.
That’s because the skills you complete during your adventure may credit these certification levels. All you have to do is complete a Student Diver Record and Referral Form, which documents your achievement, and bring it to any PADI Dive Center or Resort to continue where you left off.
To participate in the Discover Scuba Diving experience, you must be at least 10 years old.
Equipment
- During confined and open water training, each student must be equipped with fins, mask, snorkel and buoyancy-control device (BCD).Appropriate exposure protection and weight belts are to be used as needed, at the instructor’s discretion.