How old do you have to be to get your scuba diving license?
How old do you have to be to get your scuba diving license? Does anyone know where you could get one in or near Connecticut?
If you’re old enough to post in Y!A (according to the Y!A Terms & Conditions, anyway), you’re old enough to learn to scuba dive.
Contrary to what ‘Micheal’ said, no agency certifies 8 year olds to dive, as far as I know. PADI does offer a couple of confined-water programs for children aged 8-10 (the ‘Bubblemaker’ experience program, and the ‘SEAL Team’ training program), but both of these programs are restricted to a max. depth of 2 m (6 ft), and neither result in any kind of open-water diving certification.
PADI Instructors may certify students as young as 10 as ‘Junior Scuba Divers’ or ‘Junior Open Water Divers’, provided those students have completed the same theoretical and skillset requirements as the full adult ‘Scuba Diver’ and ‘Open Water Diver’ certs issued to students aged 15+. Also, PADI’s ‘Junior’ certs are hemmed about with additional restrictions on max. dive depth and eligible dive-buddy which (mostly) don’t apply to holders of the ‘adult’ versions. You can find full details of all PADI courses at http://www.padi.com
You can also find details of PADI shops in CT via the PADI website (click on the ‘Find a Dive Shop’ link, and enter your location in the search box). There is also another, non-partisan website which MovieBuff (another Y!A contributor) regularly recommends, but I can’t remember the URL offhand, sorry — you may be able to find it by searching MovieBuff’s previous answers, or through Google
(I just tried the search string "dive shop locator", and got this hit: http://www.free-diving.com/find-a-dive-shop . This wasn’t helpful in itself, but by following a couple of links from this page, I got a list of CT dive shops here: http://www.scuba-newengland.com/DiveCenterList.asp?StateID=CT ).
Hope this helps.
Depending on the company that certifies you, as young as 8.
Google where you live and scuba diving shop, and it should point you to the nearest one.
References :
If you’re old enough to post in Y!A (according to the Y!A Terms & Conditions, anyway), you’re old enough to learn to scuba dive.
Contrary to what ‘Micheal’ said, no agency certifies 8 year olds to dive, as far as I know. PADI does offer a couple of confined-water programs for children aged 8-10 (the ‘Bubblemaker’ experience program, and the ‘SEAL Team’ training program), but both of these programs are restricted to a max. depth of 2 m (6 ft), and neither result in any kind of open-water diving certification.
PADI Instructors may certify students as young as 10 as ‘Junior Scuba Divers’ or ‘Junior Open Water Divers’, provided those students have completed the same theoretical and skillset requirements as the full adult ‘Scuba Diver’ and ‘Open Water Diver’ certs issued to students aged 15+. Also, PADI’s ‘Junior’ certs are hemmed about with additional restrictions on max. dive depth and eligible dive-buddy which (mostly) don’t apply to holders of the ‘adult’ versions. You can find full details of all PADI courses at http://www.padi.com
You can also find details of PADI shops in CT via the PADI website (click on the ‘Find a Dive Shop’ link, and enter your location in the search box). There is also another, non-partisan website which MovieBuff (another Y!A contributor) regularly recommends, but I can’t remember the URL offhand, sorry — you may be able to find it by searching MovieBuff’s previous answers, or through Google
(I just tried the search string "dive shop locator", and got this hit: http://www.free-diving.com/find-a-dive-shop . This wasn’t helpful in itself, but by following a couple of links from this page, I got a list of CT dive shops here: http://www.scuba-newengland.com/DiveCenterList.asp?StateID=CT ).
Hope this helps.
References :
Former full-time scuba instructor (PADI # 609394)
What tj said.
SSI has a Scuba Rangers program for children as young as 7 according to their website (http://www.divessi.com/scuba_rangers) but their in-water training is limited to confined water. Certification is only offered to 10 year olds and up.
NAUI doesn’t offer any pre-certification programs to children. Like PADI and SSI, the minimum age for certification is 10.
The URL I usually recommend for finding a dive center is http://www.dtmag.com/dcsearch.html . Type in your zip code and it will list the 7 nearest dive centers to your location.
References :
NAUI Instructor