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I been 1 years doing many dives in openwater, learning scuba diving from a friend PADI certification card holder. Is it necessary for me to enroll on a diving center to acquire certification card? What is the advantage of having a dive certification card?
I been 1 years doing many dives in openwater, learning scuba diving from a friend PADI certification card holder. Is it necessary for me to enroll on a diving center to acquire certification card? What is the advantage of having a dive certification card?
The scuba monopoly will prevent you from getting a tank filled or boarding a scuba charter. The same monopoly will sell you all the gear you can afford no questions asked.
I been 1 years doing many dives in openwater, learning scuba diving from a friend PADI certification card holder. Is it necessary for me to enroll on a diving center to acquire certification card? What is the advantage of having a dive certification card?
Hey, Climax101, you are really taking a big risk & your mate is too. Get proper certification - you would be amazed at the wonderful opportunities that open up after proper certification. Any interested person can dive but do it properly & safely. Its scenarios like this that give scuba diving a bad rep.
Hi, there are serious safety issues involved in diving on compressed air and, for that reason, people like to know that you are a safe diver. That is why you will be asked for a certification - it is your indication of being a safe diver - for the confidence of OTHERS.
Do a course and you may find out why safety is such an issue.
Skills like buddy breathing, mask clearing, emergency procedures, what do do if you make a mistake, how to avoid mistakes, and on top of that a card will let you dive other places. If you travel shops will generally not accept "my buddy showed me" as proof of training.
And if you invest some time in the sport to become a professional someone may actually pay you to take tourists diving in the Philipines.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” -Twainwww.deepbluevoyager.com
"Hey bro, that's great. Sure... you did some diving with your friend who showed you some stuff. Here's a certification card in lieu of taking a comprehensive and regulated course!"
If you don't have a certification card, then you'll find it extremely difficult to source air-fills and dive boat charters...especially if you wanted to dive outside of the Philippines.
There aren't many businesses who'd be happy to take a diver underwater who had undocumented training, of an unknown standard, taken with a non-professionally trained 'instructor'. I can't blame them. You'd be a big liability for them.
Likewise, as you've recieved your training from 'some guy'.. who doesn't know himself exactly what and how you should have been trained.... then for your own peace of mind, I would suggest that proper training would be a very good step forward. You may feel confident about diving.... but really, 'you don't know what you don't know'.
PADI used to run a thing called the 'PADI Experienced Diver Certification Program'.
This was a cross-over scheme for experienced, but uncertified, divers. You had to show proof of 20 logged dives (logged and verified in a log book), complete all knowledge reviews, quizzes and exam from the OW course, complete a skill circuit of core scuba skills...and demonstrate those skills on 4 open water training dives.
There's no mention of that program in the current/latest PADI instructor manual... so it may have been discontinued. Perhaps another instructor may have an answer on that.
Last edited by DevonDiver; May 2nd, 2011 at 07:49 AM.
As always I endorse the comments of Devondiver but wish to add who is his right mind would want to buddy with an untrained diver? This constitutes a risk to every other concerned diver on your trip and you are. depriving yourself of the joys of continuous structured learning. For your pleasure and safety, get certified.
The scuba monopoly will prevent you from getting a tank filled or boarding a scuba charter. The same monopoly will sell you all the gear you can afford no questions asked.
Would that be the same 'scuba monopoly' that wouldn't buddy with an untrained diver?
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Originally Posted by climax101
