“I want to be a badass UTD scuba diver! Now what?”
Where do you start? How do you navigate the world of dive centers, instructors, training, and certification?
The first step is not why you want to dive – that’s personal. The first step is understanding the difference between training and certification.
UTD Scuba Diving is focused on training. We will help you earn certification, but first and foremost we will train you to be a powerful, safe, and aware scuba diver.
We start with the most basic skill that every diver needs – team awareness. Scuba diving is a team sport. Your team is your safety net – backup air, backup brain. Team awareness is the single most important aspect of UTD Scuba Diving training. You will always focus on your team for safety, efficiency, and for fun.
Next is buoyancy control. Buoyancy control is how you manage your position in the water, controlling your depth so you don’t crash into the ocean floor destroying marine life and churning up so much silt the rest of your team can’t see. Buoyancy control is also managing your ascent from depth so you don’t go rocketing to the surface potentially aggravating the effects of breathing compressed air at depth.
Buoyancy control is the key to safe and fun diving, and we teach it first. Every open water class starts in a pool where you learn to control your depth using your breath. Breathe in go up; breathe out go down. We start you without the encumbrance of any scuba equipment – just a regulator to breathe from attached to a tank on the surface.
Once you master that, we slowly make it more complicated, first adding a wetsuit, which floats, or has ‘positive’ buoyancy, then adding some weight to offset that. Then we practice again using your breath to control your depth in the water.
The next steps are to slowly add equipment, and finally a scuba tank, so you are completely self contained yet still using your breathing to control your position in the water.
All of this is so you don’t crash into the bottom or go uncontrollably to the surface.
We also teach you to kick properly, forward and backward, so you can maintain precise control of your horizontal position in the water.
At this point you are a scuba diver, ready for a series of open water training and experience dives. Your instructor will take you into the water where you will explore this amazing environment and practice the skills you learned in the pool. All of our open water training dives have an exploration part and a training part – fun and safety.
Your last dive in your open water class is all about you. You and your team will take your instructor on an exploration dive. You will perform pre-dive checks, discuss the dive plan, water entry, navigation, ascent profiles, and your exit strategy. Your UTD instructor will help you when you need it, but you are the captain of your dive.
And at the end of it all, you arrive at the beginning of your scuba diving life, scuba certified and ready to explore the world underwater, to go safely where few can go, and to live the dream of diving around the world.
To search for your UTD Scuba Diving instructor, click here.
If we can help you with anything on your journey as a UTD scuba diver, contact up by clicking here.
We look forward to guiding you on your journey to become the best, badass diver in the sea.
