What to Expect: Open Water Certification

Ever wondered how to get scuba certified but don’t know where to start? 🤿 In this episode of Just Go Diving, Chastity and Joel break down everything you need to know—from picking the right certification agency (PADI, SSI, NAUI—what’s the deal?!) to what actually happens in your scuba training.

We’re talking e-learning, pool skills, open water dives, and yes—the dreaded mask removal. 😱 Plus, we’ll answer the big question: Can you actually fail your scuba course? (Spoiler: Yes, but don’t panic—failure is just part of the learning process!)

So grab your gear and let’s Just Go Diving! 🌊

🎧 In This Episode:
✅ How to choose a scuba certification agency
✅ What to expect in e-learning, pool training & open water dives
✅ The essential gear you’ll need (and what you can rent)
✅ The skills you’ll master—including safety stops, buoyancy, and underwater communication
✅ Why keeping a dive log actually matters
✅ Can you fail scuba certification? What happens if you do?

💬 Got questions? Hit us up in the comments or check the show notes for links to the different scuba agencies to help you decide which is right for 

Links to SCUBA Training Organizations:

NAUI https://www.naui.org/

PADI https://www.padi.com/

SSI    https://www.divessi.com/en/home

SDI/TDI https://www.tdisdi.com/

GUE https://www.gue.com/

BSAC https://www.bsac.com/home/

CMAS https://www.cmas.org/

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#ScubaDiving #JustGoDiving #ScubaCertification #Diving101 #UnderwaterAdventures

Transcript

Chastity Stern (00:00)
Hey, it's me, Chastity, and welcome to Just Go Diving.

Chastity Stern (00:18)
Hey Joel, how's it going?

Joel Chernick (00:21)
How are you doing?

Chastity Stern (00:23)
I'm good.

Joel Chernick (00:30)
So they've made a choice about the organization that they want to use, then what are they going to expect? What's going to happen after they sign up? What are they going to have to do?

Chastity Stern (00:40)
Of course the first step is to pick an organization that's suited for your goals and learning style. Then you're going to need to find a local dive shop and purchase your course. You'll complete your e-learning online, which is physics dive tables the underwater environment and safety protocols.

Then you're going to purchase the gear that you need because when you begin in water sessions you're going to need a mask, fins, snorkel, some dive boots. Depending on if you're warm or cold water, you may end up needing hood, gloves.

Joel Chernick (01:15)
And then you could rent the other things that you need when you're starting off. You can rent your tanks or your BCs or most other stuff.

Chastity Stern (01:18)
Yes.

I imagine that most all certification courses, tanks, weights, BCD, regulator, dive computer, all of that is included in your course cost.

Joel Chernick (01:35)
That's good. Now if you're going to pick out masks and fins and snorkels and stuff, these are things that you probably want to go in person and try on and make sure they fit rather than buying them online, I'm guessing.

Chastity Stern (01:48)
Yes, and there will be a whole podcast episode specifically devoted to how to pick your dive gear. So make sure you come back and listen to that one.

Joel Chernick (01:58)
Mmm.

Yeah, that'll be a very interesting subject. So you've done all that stuff, what's going to happen when you actually go into the classroom?

Chastity Stern (02:11)
Some of the things that you're going to be expected to know about are dive equipment, dive physics, dive physiology, signals, we use underwater signals to communicate with our buddy. You're going to learn about dive tables and how to actually log your dives. Now, some of the organizations are going to teach you about dive computers. You're going to learn about buoyancy and how to hover underwater.

Joel Chernick (02:40)
Now you've done all the classroom stuff, then what do we do?

Chastity Stern (02:45)
Let's say that your dive shop has a pool or the instructor that you choose, they have access to a pool. Once you get in the pool, you're going to be required to demonstrate understanding and mastery of specific skills. There are swim skills associated with scuba diving. Everyone should have a basic understanding of swim skills.

You don't have to be an Olympic swimmer, but you do need to be able to tread water and you will have to do forward movement with different types of strokes. There is a requirement for basic swim skill proficiency. 

Then you'll have to do some snorkeling skills. You'll have to show that you can clear your snorkel. You can swim on the surface. 

You can do different types of dives. One particular dive is called the pike dive. they're going to want to see that you can do these things that way you can navigate under the water effortlessly. 

It also shows your comfort level in the water. You're going to have to do some mask skills. You've got regulator skills, emergency swimming, ascent skills, which are for safety. 

You're going to have to show that you can share air with your buddy and communicate with your buddy underwater. You will have to take your mask off underwater. That's a super important skill to learn how to do.

 It's always presented in such a weird way where "if you get your mask kicked off underwater". I've been kicked in the face a lot underwater by students and by divers who aren't as proficient as they should be and I've never gotten my mask kicked off. I have had my mask dislodged.

 Having your mask off underwater is not so much about you're going to get it removed by someone else. It's, can you take it off and be comfortable? That's really where that skill lands. Can you be without your mask in the event that something removes it and will you be able to get to the surface successfully? So that's a really important skill to learn.

 I like to teach descending on a line because in the Pacific Northwest, you don't always get great visibility. More often than not, the visibility isn't great. So I have my students descend down on a line, so I like to teach that in the pool, that way.

They're not seeing something that they've never seen before when we get to open water. I also like to teach proper ascent/descent rates and every organization should be teaching these. You're also gonna learn about safety stops and why we do them, lost buddy protocols, and you're gonna get to learn about how to use an underwater compass.

Joel Chernick (05:27)
Definitely useful skills. So I've been in the classroom. I've been in the pool. Now what?

Chastity Stern (05:35)
Then you're going to go to open water. Different organizations have a different number of dives that are required.

Joel Chernick (05:43)
Open water means the ocean?

Chastity Stern (05:46)
The ocean. 

So the caveat to that is you may live in a place where you don't have access to the ocean. You may live in a place in the United States that's landlocked, which doesn't have any access to the ocean. The ocean might be an entire day away. So you will technically go to open water in a lake or a reservoir or a quarry and you will do your open water checkout dives, as they're called, in those places to simulate what it's like to go to open water. The definition of open water is a body of water that is not surrounded by land. It's not land locked Even a river is an open water environment.

Joel Chernick (06:36)
How deep would the water have to be to be suitable for that kind of training?

Chastity Stern (06:41)
I'm going to say 10 to 20 feet is where most instructors are teaching their open water skills because you need to be at least 15 feet deep to perform the standards for some of these skills. I've only dove in a quarry one time, but the platforms I saw were probably in about 20 feet of water.

Chastity Stern (07:05)
So when you get to open water, you're gonna do four to five different dives. They're not all gonna happen on one day, so you wanna prepare to be there for a couple of days. They may do two to three dives per day, depending on the organization, and they should never be doing a third dive at night. During open water certification, you're not allowed to do night dives.

Day one, you'll do two dives and You're gonna show that you have mastery of the skills that you learned in the pool. You're gonna flood your mask, you're gonna remove and replace your mask, you're gonna do regulator skills, you're going to do purges on the regulator. So you're just gonna do the same things all over again, the only difference in open water is that you will not be getting a demonstration.

You will just be required to know the skill and perform the skill and show that you've mastered it. The fourth dive or possibly the fifth dive, depending on the organization is about planning your own dive. It's about using your compass, navigating to a specific point. It's about seeing the underwater environment. proficiently keeping track of time and depth and it allows you to use all the skills that you learned in the pool and all the skills that you showed that you're proficient at on dives one through three. It lets you finally put all of those pieces together and let you go out and do a dive with your buddy. You get buddied up and then your instructor is there with you, but they're really kind of a shadow. They're just making sure that you're comfortable and confident to do all of the pieces and make it back to shore.

You'll also be doing, dive tables and logging all of those dives. That's one of the biggest things that I think drops off after open water certification, is people stop logging their dives. You need to continue to log your dives and in your open water certification, that's where it really sets the foundation for the information that you need to keep putting in it. What's the value of it? Why is it important?

Joel Chernick (09:06)
Well, was just going to say when I started out, they talked about dive logs, very briefly in our training. And I realized I did not write down details when I did my first dive. I didn't write down what tank I'm using, how much weight I was using and especially exposure suit stuff and then I found out really quickly when I go on additional dives, I'd be like, well, I don't know what weight I used on the last one and I don't know what suit I was wearing. So I learned really early on that you should write down virtually everything because you always can reference back another time when you go diving because I say, the water temperature was this. Here's what a tank I was using so I could figure out my weights and stuff.

Chastity Stern (09:38)
Remember when we were in Cozumel and that guy left his logbook in the little locker and I was just so infatuated with all of the stuff that he had written in his dive log.

Joel Chernick (10:00)
You were, it was really an incredibly well written one.

Chastity Stern (10:04)
Incredible dive log. Just so many cool things like, Today we saw sharks or today we saw whatever. It was just so well done.

Joel Chernick (10:13)
It was almost like an underwater journal, more than just a dive log. It was really about all the things that he saw and his impressions of the stuff. That was very, very good.

Chastity Stern (10:15)
Yeah, it was great.

And then after that, you'll be done. You've completed all of the open water requirements and then you'll get SCUBA certified.

Joel Chernick (10:31)
And you get your little magic card to let you go dive anywhere and get air fills. And then you can just go diving.

Chastity Stern (10:33)
You get your magic card. Let you go diving anywhere in the world.

Yes, you can just go diving.

Joel Chernick (10:44)
So say you've gone through all that and you could not complete it for some reason.

Chastity Stern (10:49)
Are you asking me can you fail your open water course?

Joel Chernick (10:53)
Yeah, could that happen? Can a person fail at open water?

Chastity Stern (10:58)
Of course they can. Of course you can fail your open water course but it doesn't mean that it's the end of the line for you, failure is a part of learning. If you can't complete particular skills, you want to talk to your instructor. Their goal is to help you complete them and become certified. If you aren't able to get certified the first time through, it doesn't mean that you won't be able to get certified in the future.

Remember, you don't know what you don't know, so make sure you ask for help. If you aren't comfortable with a skill, ask for a repeat demonstration. That's what your instructor's for. They're there to make sure that you're comfortable and confident with these skills. And your open water certification should be the beginning, not the end. The whole goal is to continue learning, so if you fail the first time through
you're either gonna do one of two things. You're gonna quit or you're gonna come back and you're gonna hit it even harder and you're just gonna keep learning.

These were great questions, Joel. 

Super great questions. Make sure to check the show notes to find links to all of these organizations so that you can choose the right scuba organization for you.

Joel Chernick (12:10)
Excellent, Thanks. That was very informative.

Chastity Stern (12:13)
Thanks for joining me today, Joel.

Joel Chernick (12:15)
Sorry folks, we'll see you later, because we gotta Just Go Diving.

Chastity Stern (12:20)
And now for the legal stuff. The Just Go Diving podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. The opinions expressed by the host and guests are not a substitute for professional scuba instruction. All scuba diving training and activities should be performed exclusively by certified scuba divers and strictly within the scope of their training and certification. Neither the host nor the guests assume any liability for injuries, damages, or other consequences arising from the use of any information provided in this podcast.