Scuba Diving

I’m a PADI Assistant Instructor (AI-619074) with 370+ logged dives. PADI – the Professional Association of Diving Instructors – is the world’s leading scuba diver training organization with more than 6600 Dive Centers and Resorts around the world and 137,000 individual PADI Professionals who have issued more than 27 million certifications. PADI diver courses and scuba diving services are available in nearly every country.

The PADI System of diver education is based on progressive training that builds your skills in an incremental fashion, ensuring that you have mastered basic skills before progressing on to more advanced ones and introducing safety-related information and local environmental knowledge in stages.

For information regarding the PADI training system, please select the PADI Training option from the main menu or just click the link).

I also hold a TDI/SDI Advanced Nitrox Diver qualification, a crossover qualification as a BSAC Dive Leader, an RYA Powerboat Level 2 certificate and I also qualified as a Marine Mammal Medic with BDMLR (British Divers Marine Life Rescue), although sadly I’ve allowed that to lapse.

I’m not currently covering details of courses offered by any other agencies or organisations, although I plan to do so as time permits.  These will be detailed in Other Training and will include TDI/SDI, BSAC, RYA and BDMLR, as well as one or two other bits of training I’ve received.

I’ll be adding to my scuba diving blog in due course (below).  I’m hoping that 2021 will be kinder to the Human Race than 2020 was and that I’ll be able to get back into the water after a long lay-off due to medical issues.

• 05-May-2016 : Training
  The PADI System of diver education is based on progressive training that builds your skills in an incremental fashion…
• 15-Jan-2016 : Unwanted Bubbles: The Importance Of Safety Stops
  If you’re a PADI-trained diver, your instructor will have explained to you the wisdom of a safety stop at the end of every dive. BSAC divers are given similar advice. What’s the rationale behind this? There are purely practical reasons for making a short pause before your final ascent. It allows you to double-check your bottom ...
• 29-Jan-2013 : Getting ready for the new season!
  Right, that’s the 12-litre cylinders delivered to Dive 90 in Cheltenham: the new one should sail past a visual inspection but the older one is up for a hydrostatic test and its ‘twin’ (purchased at the same time in 1999) failed a hydro two years ago. For more information on diving cylinders, download this very comprehensive ...
• 19-Dec-2003 : Tidenham
  The housing for my Canon Powershot A70 digital camera arrived about six weeks ago after about two months on the waiting list of Robert White Camera Specialists in Poole, Dorset. I’d had one abortive attempt to try it out at Brixham a couple of weeks ago but the visibility had been truly awful …