PADI certification

Seal Team certification: Your Seal Team certificate is the first stage to your padi dive certification. In this course you will practise diving in a four meter deep pool. For this course you have to be eight years or older.

You can add on speciality courses to your Seal Team certification.  There are five aquamissions helping you to improve your diving skills.  On top of that you can do special courses in such things as marine animal identification, navigation, night diving and so on.

Open water dive: This is the first real PADI certification you can get as a junior diver.  This full course normally lasts three to four days and includes a significant amount of theory.  To complete this course, you must be at least 10 years old.  However, when completed you can dive in open waters with an instructor or certified adult.

My own experience

I first started scuba diving at the age of 8. My parents both dived when they were younger, and they wanted me to experience the same excitement.

My first scuba dive was in a pool at a diving school in Spain. I went through the PADI seal course there, learning the basics of diving in a closed water environment.

At the age of 11, I completed my PADI Open Water course. This was a great experience! First I had to do an online theory course which took about a week with a few hours of study per day. After completing the theory I did a closed water dive on day one, and then my first open water dive on day two.

On my open water dives, I got to dive down to about six meters off the Spanish coast. We did the requied skill tests, such as taking our mask off and on, switching air supply, taking off weights and BCD (both underwater and on the surface) and general buoyancy practice. But there was also time to enjoy the dives and look at the marine environment!