Learning to dive – which agency is best?

There’s an alphabet soup of dive training agencies out there – so which one is best, and how do you choose?

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By Mark 'Crowley' Russell

One of the most common questions that turns up on internet discussion forums – and which usually results in the most heated debates – is: ‘which agency should I learn to dive with?’ As soon as those words appear in a post, a whole world of opinionated, vitriolic drivel will be unleashed.

So – here is my opinion. For basic, entry-level recreational scuba diving, it really does not matter.

You can find an exhaustive list of scuba training agencies (I will just use ‘agency’ as a blanket term to include clubs and federations) in this Wikipedia article, but some of the more commonly encountered names in recreational diving would be (in alphabetical order) BSAC, CMAS, NASE, NAUI, PADI, PDIC, RAID, SDI, SEI, and SSI.

PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors) and SSI (Scuba Schools International) are the two largest agencies, and the most likely to be encountered in popular tourist hotspots, although they have a large presence outside holiday resorts.

BSAC (British Sub Aqua Club) and ScotSAC, north of the border, are UK-based clubs; and CMAS (Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques ) is a European umbrella federation which standardises training across a broad range of subsidiary members.

RAID – also known as DiveRAID – formerly a rebreather-centric training agency, broadened its reach to encompass open-circuit scuba diving from basic recreational to full-on tech, and has expanded its international portfolio substantially over the past five years.

Although NAUI (North American Underwater Instructors) and NASE (North American Scuba Educators) have international outlets, they are primarily American, as are PDIC (Professional Diving Instructors Corporation).

SEI (Scuba Educators International) is the US-based continuation of the now-defunct YMCA diving program, and SDI (Scuba Diving International) is the recreational arm of TDI (Technical Diving International), which focuses on recreational training as a precursor to tech diving.

As you may have noticed, the term ‘Alphabet Soup’ is well deserved. Which one you choose to start with, however, is mostly down to local availability and, in some cases, budget.

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More from DIVE Magazine’s Learning to Dive series

• 15 things you need to know about learning to dive
• Is scuba diving safe?
• Is scuba diving right for me?
• What to expect from a scuba diving course

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Location, location, location…

All the entry-level dive courses on offer, regardless of training agency, are comprised of the same components: theory, confined water practice and open water training, so whether you learn to dive at weekends at home with a local club, or on holiday at a dive resort, you will receive instruction in the same concepts and skills.

The same basic skills for safe diving are taught across all programmes, but there are differences between the way the courses are structured, and a handful of skills over and above the basics that may or may not be included. There are differences in the minimum age to begin training (10-12 years old), the number of open water dives (four to six) and the maximum depth to which the diver is eventually certified (18 – 20m).

There may be additional requirements for the course depending on where the training takes place – for example, training in the use of a drysuit if you are learning to dive in a cold-water environment.

It’s essential to note that a scuba diving course trains you to dive in similar conditions to the environment in which the course takes place. If therefore, you learn to dive in warm, clear, calm, tropical water then it would be foolish to jump into cold, murky water prone to harsh currents without additional training and experience.

Additional training for a particular environment may come in the form of continuing education programmes – for example, drift diving, deep diving, drysuit diving for currents, depth, and cold – or perhaps a series of orientation dives with an instructor experienced in the local environment.

Dive course pricing

There is some disparity between the price of courses offered, even in the same location. As always, if the price seems too good to be true, then it probably is, but that does not mean that a lower-priced course is necessarily inferior.

Some agencies, for example, require that you pay extra for the course materials such as books or online learning programmes. This makes those courses more expensive than those that don’t.

There may also be external factors such as boat hire or swimming pool fees which affect the prices of courses between different centres, but these are independent of the agency.

If you have differently-priced options available to you, don’t be afraid to ask the dive centre why.

Can I switch agencies once I’ve started?

Broadly speaking, agencies recognise the need for divers to progress their education without having to repeat the same courses, so if you complete your entry-level course under one, you can start the next course with another.

If you learn to dive at home in the UK with BSAC, for example, and you wish to continue your education on a forthcoming holiday where only PADI or SSI centres are available, your BSAC Ocean Diver qualification will count as meeting the minimum requirements to start a PADI Advanced Open Water course, and vice versa.

Switching agencies during a course is possible, but will depend on how much you have learned, and how long ago it was. There’s little call for inter-agency referrals, although it can happen if a diver becomes ill while on holiday, for example.

Do dive training agencies have different safety standards?

Internet keyboard warriors constantly assert that some agencies are safer than others. What statistics are available, however, make this a nonsense.

For starters, all major training bodies are required to comply with International (ISO) safety standards for recreational scuba diving, which may be further superseded by additional regional or national standards, in order to operate in most countries.

Additionally, most of the big names also subscribe to the WRSTC (World Recreational Scuba Training Council), an organisation comprised of industry experts and agency representatives with the aim of standardising training and safety standards across the industry, worldwide.

Safety standards regarding things outside the remit of the course content – for example, boats, transportation, pools and other logistical aspects – are going to vary widely around the world, but the standards under which the programmes must be conducted remain the same.

It is also fair to say that – just as in any walk of life – there are bad dive instructors and poorly managed dive centres, but thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, these are increasingly rare, and training bodies come down hard when the bad apples are reported.

So – which agency should I start my training with?

During my career as a full-time dive professional, I saw good and bad divers certified by all of the top training bodies. I have dived with people fresh out of their holiday training program who were better and more conscientious divers than their more experienced club-diving peers; people who told me they were ‘doing it right’ but did everything wrong.

The short version of the story is that it doesn’t matter which agency or club you learn to dive with, it matters who teaches you, and how willing you are to apply yourself to the training.

In the next article, we’ll have a look at some of the ways you can make certain that you are trained safely and competently by a good instructor, and how to look out for dive centres that may be cutting corners for profit.