PADI

PADI or Professional Association of Diving Instructors offers a wide range of courses to serve all levels of divers including beginners. PADI is the largest recreational diving organization globally since it was founded back in 1966 and has instructors trained in diving locations around the world.

PADI courses range between different difficulties including a wide range of entry levels such as open water diver and scuba diver.   The range continues up to master scuba diver with the option to obtain official certification as an instructor.

They also offer technical diving courses alongside their affiliate organization Diving Science and Technology so that divers can learn about Trimix diving, decompression diving, and gas blending.

PADI courses include both practical training and skill lessons with theory that is studied usually with textbooks or online courses followed by actual time spent in the water so that students can apply what they have learned.

At the end of each course a student must pass an exam with a scuba instructor in the water in order to obtain certification.  Skills are generally tested in shallow confined water areas such as pools while performance is studied in open water.

Each level of PADI courses builds upon each other so that students learn the fundamentals as they learn how to dive in more difficult conditions.  The beginners course focus most on practical knowledge and safety while higher levels emphasize the chemistry and physiology of diving.  Philosophies of diving and further esoteric details are reserved for divers who graduate into the master courses of the PADI.

PADI offices are found in Canada, Australia, the UK, Sweden, the US, Japan, and Switzerland.  PADI’s corporate headquarters are found in the United States state of California.

There are PADI courses offered in 5,300 dive centres and resort locations that are found in over 180 countries across the globe.  To open up learning opportunities the course material for PADI courses has been translated into over 26 different languages.