I’m thinking about getting my scuba diving certification since I’m going to the Jamaica (yay!) in a couple months. The place nearest to me offers SDI certification and I was wondering how SDI certification compares to PADI certification. All the people I know who are cerftified have PADI certs and I have been unable to find any comparisions between the two. Anyone got the scoop on this?
Thanks,
Novus
PADI certification is worthless. It’s a joke certification issued in swimming pools at resorts so that people can rent the gear, and SCUBA quickly.
I don’t know about SDI, but NAUI has a very good and comprehensive course that will help you learn what you need to dive safely.
Scylla -
I have to disagree. Maybe things have changed but the PADI course that I went through seemed just as, if not more demanding than the NAUI that my brother did.
Maybe you are talking about a special resort Cert. Where you can only go to a certain depth and have to have in instructor for a buddy?
I’m not a diver, but a cursory Google search reveals that both SDI (Scuba Diving International) and PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) have many levels of instruction available; they are not certifications in and of themselves. You will need to investigate your needs and determine what courses meet those needs, regardless of who offers them.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter which certification that you get, so long as you apply yourself, study well, know the tables and keep breathing!
In general, one completes a basic open-water course which gives the basic information necessary for general sport-diving. That will provide you with a certification card (C-card). Dive shops will require that you possess a C-card before they sell you compressed air for your tanks, or allow you to dive with their tanks.
Additional specialty certifications are available beyond that, i.e. advanced open-water, rescue diver, cave diver, etc.
If, after you’ve gone through the course, you don’t believe that you’ve learned the material well enough, many dive-shops will allow you re-take the course and pay only for the pool-time rather than the entire fee again.
Where did you get your info., Scylla? I’m PADI certified, and it took several months to go through the course, which included two beach dives [hiking across a hot, sandy beach to get to the water wearing a full wet suit, tank and other gear], and two boat dives in the Pacific Ocean. We were also tested on technical info. and had to learn dive tables. Lots of safety info., too.
I am not familiar with resort certifications, if that’s what they are called.
Harsh comments, Scylla. I did the PADI course in Queensland, and it I was given full training both closed and open water, including night dives and a liveaboard. On what basis are you saying its “worthless”?
PADI offers a certificate lower than their “Open Water” certificate; it allows you to dive with an instructor. SDI also offers one; NAUI doesn’t. The basic “Open Water” diving certificates from all three are essentially the same. Apparently Scylla is (a) a snob, and (b) prone to shooting his mouth off without knowing the facts.
Now you mention it, Nametag, I remember a friend of mine did a basic NAUI course which was lower than the “open water”. When we went to Thailand together he had to do a full PADI course because he wasn’t fully open water qualified. As you say, I think Scylla posted without knowing all the facts.
Heres an informative link about some of the courses PADI offer:
I have a PADI cert, I think it’s fine. The “resort course” that people are talking about is about an hour of pool instruction and is fine for what they’ll allow you to do with it (one 30 min 30’ dive/day) I have done this course as well, in fact in Jamica. You may want to consider just taking the resort course if you have never been diving before. I know a few people who have tried diving and dont really like it.
Couple things about the resourt course; there’s usually a fairly rigorous swim test before they’ll let you dive, and the lesson is very brief (so if you think you may be nerveous before your first dive the resourt course is probably not the way to go). The cert they give you is IIRC will let you dive for up to 30 days on with the resort that issued the certification. I’m sure the level of instruction will vary from resort to resort, but all in all probably not a bad introduction to diving…
Perhaps I am talking out of my ass.
My information dates back to 1989, and refers to PADI doing the certification courses at resorts where in an afternoon you can get your card.
If things have changed for the better, than I’m glad to be wrong.
PADI has something of a reputation for just collecting as many certification fees as possible and relaxing certain safety considerations, so Scylla’s comments, while overstated, are generaly grounded in reality. NAUI has a much better overall reputation on training. Having used both–and dived with several PADI-certified open water divers who could barely operate their equipment–I agree that NAUI is the better organization.
However, the most important consideration is not which organization hands you your C-card, but the quality of the instructor who’s going to be doing your training. Don’t just wander into the nearest dive shop and sign up for a course. Ask divers you know about who trained them, and who they’d recommend. And don’t just ask the guy down the hall who got certified two years ago before he went to Jamiaca and hasn’t dived since–find people who take multiple trips each year, who’ve been doing it for a long time, and who actually know the names of the people at their dive shops. Those opinions will be immeasurably more valuable than some schmoe who once took a resort course.
And if you can’t find anyone who fits the bill, try the message boards at http://www.scubadiving.com
Good luck! Diving isn’t for everyone (including mrs. green 
), but it’s the coolest thing in the world for me.
I got my Open Water certification through ISS, which merged with NASDS as I was being certified (or was it the other way around? I don’t have my card with me). I later got a Drysuit Specialty card through PADI. A friend of mine was certified for Open Water, and took his refresher coursse with me as I was earning Open Water. His take on it was thart different certifying organizations emphasize different areas.
When he took his PADI course, they focused a lot on memorizing tables, working out equations, and testing your memory on how to handle emergency situations. They did very little pool work before taking them to an actual dive site for the final phase of certification.
In my class, we did equal amounts of pool work and “dry” work. There was, in my friend’s opinion, a greater emphasis on gear safety-- making sure you assembled it correctly, tested it correctly, and stored it correctly between uses. The pool work really focused on the practical aspects of diving: how to clear your mask, how to stay oriented, what to do if your air is cut off, etc, etc. We memorized tables and solved problems, too, but again, the focus was on the practical application.
I don’t know that that’s true of all NASDS/PADI schools, but that was my friend’s experience. When I earned my drysuit specialty with PADI, I had to buy a book about drysuit diving and care, take a VERY brief test, and then spend a day with an instructor. It was a blast, and I feel I learned everything I needed to know for that specialty.
Let’see see— how many things did I do wrong in the first paragraph alone? Sorry about the typos. And I want to clarify that my friend got his Open Water certification through PADI, and did his refresher course with me at NASDS.
I have padi advanced open water and my friend has naui 1 (whatever they call it) I would say that Naui 1 is a little more involved then Padi (1) but not as much at padi (2)
For Padi 1 you I needed 4 openwater dives to a depth of no greater the 60 ft (mine was 20 ft)
For padi 2 you need 4 dives 1 greater then 60 ft (mine was 90)
I’m leaning towards going with the regualr OW cert. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, so I don’t think I’ll dislike it, as presumptuous as that sounds.
Novus
By way of comparison, NAUI requires 5 dives for its basic open water certification, though one of those can be a skin dive. NAUI requires six dives for advanced certification, including one deep (100+ ft.) and one night dive.
Here’s a link to NAUI’s course listing.
I took the NAUI open water course in 1980. My wife took the PADI open water diver course in 1993.
There really was no comparison. My wife’s course was a weekend of 2 8-hour days, plus an open water exam.
The course material for NAUI including a lot of science and math, centered around gas laws, tank filling procedures, and the use of the U.S. Navy dive tables.
The PADI course just touched on any of the gas laws, taught the use of simplified ‘sport’ dive tables, and overall I’d say covered maybe half the material of the NAUI course.
The NAUI swim requirements were 1 lap of a pool underwater breath holding, 8 laps on the surface, a 4-lap distressed diver tow, having to drop all our snorkelling gear in 12ft of water and dive and and put it on and purge and surface, etc. Fairly stringent. The Open Water included a number of tasks including a long-distance diver tow and a free dive to 30ft. My open water was a full weekend of dives.
My wife’s swim requirements were far lighter. No free dives, no requirement to fetch equipment from the deep end, etc. She elected to do her open water on a holiday in Florida, and was basically just a nice tropical dive. No heavy testing requirements, although they were observed by an instructor who had to certify them as competant.
But I’m not sure if the difference was NAUI vs PADI, or whether it was 1980 vs 1993. When I got my certification, most divers dove on their own, unsupervised. By 1993, the average diver almost never dove without a tour guide and professional boat captain.
So it makes perfect sense that the basic open-water exam would be tailored to that group, and then additional certifications available for people who want to stretch their capabilities.
Anyone else have knowledge of whether PADI or NAUI have watered down their basic courses over the years?
Scylla
I was certified through PADI back in 1985…full course, took a few months that included dive tables and a full open dive in a resevior here in Colorado.
Just a little fact, we have more certified scuba divers per capita here in Colorado than any other state except for Florida, so it’s been told on the news anyway.