How to Try Scuba - What is Discover Scuba Diving_ .

If you're interested in scuba diving but aren't quite sure if you want to commit to a full course without knowing if you'll enjoy it, then this video is for you. Let's face it, scuba diving takes a bit of an investment in both time and money, and if we aren't sure if we're going to like it or we might be a little bit afraid, we might have some hesitations about signing up for a full course. Luckily, there is a way to try scuba diving without taking the full course, and it's called Discover Scuba Diving. And in this video, I'm going to cover what you can expect, how you can get started with it, and how it can help you if you decide to start the full certification path after this. Let's get into it. I'm Thomas Hughes, a professional scuba instructor, and on this channel you'll see videos on scuba education, equipment, experiences, and environmental awareness. Discover Scuba Diving is an offering from PADI, the largest scuba agency in the world, and it's designed to get you in the water as fast as possible so you can see if scuba diving is going to be for you. Other agencies have the same concept, and they may call it something like a Try Scuba or something like that. And after you google to see some shops in your area, you can ask questions about Try Scuba, Discover Scuba Diving, and regardless of the agency, they should know exactly what you're talking about. Once you sign up, you'll do a brief knowledge development, and then you'll go ahead and get into the water and get to try out scuba diving. It's that easy and that simple. But let's back up a minute and break down those steps just a little bit more. By the way, this video was actually inspired by a comment that I received on my How to Become a Scuba Diver video, where someone said that they were a little bit nervous about jumping right into scuba diving, and they have family members that are certified, but they want to try it before they buy it in a sense. So in response to that, I'm making this video, and if you have some video ideas or questions that you want answered, leave a comment down below, and I'll make sure to create a video for you as well. Okay, so you're ready to try scuba diving. Great. So let's go ahead and go over to Google and type in dive shop near me, and let's find a local dive shop that you can take your training through and try out this experience. You may actually be surprised to find that you don't need to go near the coast to go scuba diving. Myself, I was certified in a lake in Texas, and I dive regularly out here in North Carolina in the United States, in a rock quarry actually. There's fresh water all around that people go scuba diving in and get certified in, so if you're inland in the United States or whichever country you live in, you may still be able to get certified by a local shop, maybe within an hour's drive of you, because they really are all over the world. As you pull up these lists of shops, I actually recommend you call a few of them, and there's a few reasons why. The local dive shop that you work with will probably be the one that you continue to take your classes through. There's nothing that you need to do in terms of being locked into a specific store or anything like that. However, what I found is that you kind of go through a bonding experience. So if you do decide to go through your full certification, you have that instructor that you worked with, you probably bought equipment from the store at this point, and you kind of build this bond and trust with them. So having the right group of people that you really feel comfortable with is important, and I think sometimes you can get a feel for that just by talking over the phone. How patient are they with you? How understanding are they? Are they very dismissive, or maybe on the other hand, are they really rushing you through the process without letting you ask your questions? These are really important things, because again, what I found is that once I get started with one shop, I might want to continue with that shop, and they kind of become like family to you in a way. So if you take your time in the beginning to call a few different shops, maybe stop in, meet a few people, and see which one you click with, it's best. And while I don't want to say that any shop is a bad scuba shop or anything like that, there are some that are definitely a little bit better, I think, than others in terms of recommendations for gear, answering your questions, taking continued education through, and things like that. So if you do decide to continue scuba diving, you want to make sure you find a good shop for you and a good fit for you. And whether that's on the first go around, or if you try some later in the future, that's okay too, but at the end of the day, we want to find that shop that we feel most comfortable with. So make sure you call a few of them. When you talk to these dive shops, there's going to be a few questions that you'll ask, such as what's the process for signing up for a Discover Scuba Diving or DSD? They might call it a Tri Scuba or something like that. So asking about that process, and then if the knowledge development is in person or online through what they call e-learning or electronic learning, of course, you're going to want to know things like scheduling. In general, you should be able to get into the water pretty quickly after taking a quick knowledge review, but depending on the circumstances, they might need to schedule the time for you to get in the water with a dive guide. And then they might have some other processes or something specific to that shop as well that you want to know about. And lastly, of course, is going to be the cost too. And each shop kind of has some different costs that they'll involve with that. They might take that cost and put it towards your open water certification sometimes, if you decide to continue your education, so you can ask about that. And then they might have you buy a few things up front. Usually it's going to be your mask, your fins, and your snorkel. Now, I did mention knowledge development and I said it's something you'll either do online or with the instructor in person. And I don't want you to get too nervous about this. It's pretty light. It takes maybe 30 minutes to an hour at most to complete. And it's going to be just some really basic high-level scuba diving skills and things to remember. So for example, the number one rule of scuba diving is that you will always be breathing. You never want to hold your breath, so you're always going to be breathing in or breathing out. And that's one of the things you'll learn. You'll also learn some basics about the equipment you're going to be using, such as the BCD or buoyancy compensator device, which is just basically the harness that holds our scuba cylinder on the back and has everything kind of attached to it, though it stays on our body for us. It also has an inflatable tube in the back that kind of allows us to control our buoyancy up and down. And if there's some water that leaks into your mask, because, hey, you're going underwater for the first time, you might be smiling. And as your cheeks rise up as you smile, that water trickles into your mask and you want to be able to clear it out as well. And they'll teach you about all of that in the training and then also in person as well. Finally, they'll cover a couple more things such as equalizing your ears, which is something that we all do as divers where you kind of just pinch your nose and lightly blow. And that will allow you to relieve the pressure in your ears as you descend under the water. And then finally, the last thing will be hand signals. So there'll be some basic ones such as going up, going down. Are you OK? And you would answer with an OK as well. They might also ask you to check your air pressure, though, for the most part in these discover scuba diving programs or the try scuba programs, the instructor is going to be monitoring your buoyancy, monitoring your air pressure and things like that for you. So you don't have to worry too much about this, but it's to give you a feel of what scuba diving is like and how we communicate underwater. After you complete your knowledge development, it's time to go ahead and get in the water, which is the most exciting part and why we signed up for the experience to begin with. Now, I know getting into the water might sound a little bit scary for some of us, but let me try to ease some of those fears for you. To start, you're going to be in a confined water setting, which in almost every case is going to be within a pool. That's going to be the first time you breathe underwater. And some instructors might have you put your regulator in your mouth and just kind of put your head in the water to breathe from it just to get the idea of breathing from your mouth and through that regulator. For the first time, you can blow some little bubbles and things like that and have some fun with it. If you kneel down, you'll be just below the water so you can go in and breathe again in and out. You'll have your face under the water there and kind of see what that experience is like of actually breathing underwater. For the most part, this starts in water that is maybe waist high when you're standing, so you can again kneel down and be just below the surface. So if you do have any issues at all, you can just stand up and you'll be totally fine. So there's nothing to worry about here. In the pool, they're going to go over some of the basic skills that they talked about in the knowledge development. So they'll show you inflating and deflating your BCD using the inflator hose. They're going to show you how to recover your regulator if it gets knocked out of your mouth, put it back in your mouth and hit the purge button or blow out hard, and that'll clear the water out of the regulator so you can breathe from it again. They're also going to show you how to clear water from your mask. So again, if you're happy, smiling, laughing around, or your buddy next to you bumps into you some and a little bit of water leaks in there, we want to be able to clear that water out so you can still see everything and enjoy the underwater experience. And that's real simple too. So they'll show you how to do all of that. If you're still feeling a little bit nervous or anxious or have some fear about some of these different skills and what scuba diving might be like, check out my video on overcoming the most common myths and fears about scuba diving. After these basic skills, the scuba instructor is going to go ahead and have you swim around the pool and explore the area some underwater and you'll get to have an experience that you've never had in your life before. Way different than snorkeling and you get to see things from a whole other perspective. The first time I breathed underwater and I was able to stay down there and I realized, hey, it's been a minute or two and I'm still down here breathing. I haven't had to go up for air yet. It was just mind blowing to me. And the weightlessness and that whole feeling of just swimming underwater and being free like that is something that you'll just never forget again. And I promise you, you're going to have a huge smile on your face and you're going to want to sign up for open water right away. And in some cases with the scuba shop that you sign up with, they might actually take you to open water as well. So you can try out scuba diving in the ocean or maybe a wider lake or quarry environment. That's going to give you a lot more of the experience of where we're not just in a pool anymore, but we actually get to see fish. You might be able to see cool rocks or coral formations depending on exactly where we're at. And that is a whole mind blowing experience that you're going to absolutely love. If you are lucky enough to be near the ocean, they're going to take you to an calm inlet area or maybe like a house reef or something like that, where there's not really going to be any waves or current or anything like that. And the dive instructor is going to basically keep a hand on you the whole time on one of your harness straps. And they'll be good again, controlling your buoyancy by taking your inflator hose and kind of deflating or inflating as needed to keep you going. You just kind of kick along and breathe and you get to enjoy the beautiful sights. Now, depending on the instructor in the shop, they might have you do a few skills as well in open water. So again, kind of things you did from the pool, but now you're doing it with way more space and you're not just resting on the bottom. So it is a little bit of a different experience. In this case, it might be something like clearing a little bit of water out of your mask again, or maybe pulling your regulator out, putting it back in and hitting that purge button. Throughout the entire experience, your dive guide is going to stay right there with you. Again, they'll have a hand probably holding onto your harness and just swimming right alongside you. They'll check your gas for you and see how much air pressure you have. They'll control your buoyancy for you. And they'll also be pointed out really cool things. So you might be able to look down and see some spiny lobsters or some crabs, or maybe even a moray eel or something like that. And they'll try to do their best to really get you down and be able to see those things. So you can experience just like any other scuba diver would. The best part is if you do get to do an open water dive and the instructor has you go through some skills and you're able to complete those properly, you can actually get credit towards your open water certification as well. So if you do want to continue further, you can use this dive as partial credit towards that certification. I truly recommend the Try Scuba or Discover Scuba Diving experience for anyone that's not 100% certain that they want to become a scuba diver. If you have fears or anxiety about it at all, it's a great way to get in the water and just kind of take your time with seeing if this is going to be something for you. I think scuba diving is one of the most approachable sports ever and it is such a lazy experience underwater just kind of floating and enjoying the scenery down there that while it is considered an extreme sport, it's pretty low energy and we jokingly call ourselves lazy divers all the time for a reason. I've seen people as young as 12 years old diving all the way up to in their late 80s diving. So it's really approachable to everybody and I think this is an experience that you can take to go ahead and see if diving is for you. But if you know that you want to go ahead and go on and get your full certification right away, you can check out this video on how to become a scuba diver and learn about the full certification process. With that, stay safe, have fun, and let's go diving.