I’ve been a qualified scuba-diver for over two decades. The pursuit of underwater adventures has taken me to some of my favourite places on the planet. For a scuba-diver, very often diving and snorkelling is the entire reason for planning a trip. I’ve had many adventures and experiences, from a terrifying encounter with three gigantic bull sharks off the west shore of Maui in Hawaii, to a deep 60m cave dive in Portugal, to drift dives along reefs in Egypt’s Red Sea, to exploring rocky granite coves and coral reefs of the Seychelles, to discovering submerged ancient ruins around Greek islands, to spear-fishing in a Pacific coral atoll lagoon, and almost everything imaginable in-between. Perhaps I’ll chronicle some of these in detail here one day…
I obtained my PADI Open Water scuba-diving certification in 2001 in Larnaca on the island of Cyprus. It was the second foreign holiday I’d ever been on, and the first I’d paid for. (As a humble recent graduate, my only previous foreign vacation was funded by my girlfriend at the time, a few years my senior she was head veterinary nurse at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket where I’d worked for a while on genetic research at the Centre for Preventative Medicines in the 1990s and co-authored a pioneering early paper on PCR test methodology before it was cool.) I went to Cyprus specifically to do the course. It was off season, so I was the only person in the class, completing the certification in 3 days, doing the “swimming pool” exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and scoring 100% in the written exam.
In 2008 I attained my PADI Advanced Open Water certification at Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt, specialising in Underwater Navigation, Underwater Photography and Fish Identification. Nowhere I’ve scuba-dived has surpassed the Red Sea in terms of visibility, the abundance and diversity of aquatic life, and the quality and scale of coral reefs. In particular, the Ras Mohammed National Park area is spectacular and like one vast beach where the desert meets the sea.
The PADI Open Water classes and exam became much easier in 2014 when PADI rolled out Open Water Diver Touch along with modernisation of the course content and their eLearning platform. Since then, trainee divers have just needed learn to use a Dive Computer which does all the calculations. When I did my Open Water and Advanced, I had to learn various calculations and lookups using the Recreational Dive Planner table. (Initially, when the Dive Computer module was first introduced into the course in 2010, students had to learn both ways.)
My certification took two days of classes and the final exam was in the classroom — monitored by an invigilator under controlled conditions. Although I was the only one in the class, there was no opportunity to cheat! I passed with a score of 100.00%. In contrast, today, with eLearning, divers study online in the comfort of their own home, and they even take the exam online at home!
Kids these days don’t know how lucky they are…