Most scuba certification agencies differ in their teaching styles, courses and syllabus but they all more or less cover the same basic skills in the open water certification. Here’s what you learn to become an Open Water Diver-

Practical Skills and Training:

• Preparation and assembly of all your Scuba equipment and gear for a dive. Disassembly of equipment post-dive.
• Pre-Dive Buddy safety check. Making sure that you and your buddy’s equipment is in place and working properly before the dive.
• Hand signals used underwater to signal your dive buddy in case of an emergency. Other standard hand signals.
• Water entry methods – wading/shore entry, giant stride method, seated entry and back roll entry. (Read: Scuba Diving Water Entry Methods)
• Regulator clearing and recovery. Techniques to recover your regulator in the event that it is knocked out of your mouth.(Read: Scuba Regulator Recovery and Clearing techniques)
• Mask clearing. Learning to clear a partially/ fully flooded mask comfortably underwater. Completely removing and replacing your mask underwater while breathing.
• Use of Buddy’s alternate air source. Role play scenarios of being out of air, signaling to your buddy, securing their alternate air source and ascending safely with them.
• Buddy breathing. Sharing one air source between buddies to simulate an emergency situation and learning to ascend safely while buddy breathing.
• Buoyancy control. Learning how to hover and regulate your buoyancy underwater.
• BCD Oral Inflation. Practicing how to orally inflate your buoyancy compensator/ buoyancy control device in case the inflator is not functioning properly.
• Proper descent and ascent. Following safe descending and ascending methods.

Theoretical Knowledge:

• Scuba Gas Laws – Charles Law, Henry’s Law &  Boyle’s Law
• Reading Dive tables.
• Dive Planning. Calculating dive times and decompression stops.
• Risks of Scuba Diving
• Decompression Sickness
• Scuba diving safety

Some certification agencies may include some more advanced skills like underwater navigation and no mask swimming,  scuba unit removal and replacement and so on. But making sure you properly learn and practice the above skills in your open water course, you should be just fine underwater to confidently scuba dive with a buddy.

* Photo Credits: photos by Nemo’s great uncle, Philip Morton, frerieke, @kevinv033 on Flickr.

What You Learn As An Open Water Diver was written by Noreen for Aquaviews - SCUBA Blog - Bringing You The Other 70% Of Our World