Vandit Kalia, 19 January, 2025
Congrats – you are the proud owner of a shiny new Open Water card. So what happens now?
First and foremost: put that card to use! The Open Water course is just a key that opens the gate: now you actually need to go through. A whole new world is now your oyster – get out there and start diving.
This can range from small weekend trips to places like Pondicherry or Netrani – you can head over on your own, with a dive buddy or join a dive club that organises trips (eg, Bangalore Scuba in.. well, Bangalore). These trips are a great way to gain some experience and develop your confidence/skills further.
Another option is longer trips to locations like the Andamans, Lakshadweep, Maldives or Thailand – relatively inexpensive flights and affordable accommodation make these locations surprisingly affordable, as far as holidays go.
Both these options give you very good diving for newer divers, and provide a great way to improve your skills. You can also combine the diving in these trips above to get your Advanced certification – which, in our opinion, should be done sooner rather than later (more on that in a separate article).
The experience from these dives will prepare you for some of the bucket-list dive destinations that are so easy to get to from here: Bali, Komodo, Raja Ampat, Egypt and more. A good thing about living in India – we have easy access to some of the world’s best diving, and most of it is visa free (or e-visa)… yay!
However, I will go back to what I started this article with: the Open Water card is a gateway to the sport – it is intended to provide enough basic knowledge to get you started with the sport of scuba diving, but you still need to continue to develop your skills.
The easy way to do so is also the fun way – simply dive. Have fun, spend time in the water and your skills will improve automatically. You can also take an Advanced course where you not only get certified to dive up to 30m, but also (in a well taught course) continue to develop your overall dive skills and correct any issues you have had since Open Water.
There are 2 things you can do, which I recommend very strongly:
1) After you have had 4-8 dives and are starting to get the hang of buoyancy, do a buoyancy class in a pool. By now, you should have acquired decent buoyancy skills – a buoyancy class will refine those skills significantly, correct a few common mistakes that creep into well over 90% of most new divers and also give you a few additional tweaks that will improve your comfort and air consumption in the water.
2) Use the safety stop for the first 5-10 dives to practice your essential skills – mask removal/replacement, air sharing, regulator recovery and hovering. These skills should become a conditioned reflex – something you are able to do automatically and without conscious thought.
These two things will provide a big boost in your diving skills and confidence – now you are ready to go hit up the deep sites for hammerheads and mantas. And that brings me to a bonus thing you can do to keep your passion for scuba going strong:
Become a part of a community of divers. Connecting with people who share your interest and even go on dive trips together is a great way to ensure that you stay in touch with the sport, even when work life doesn’t allow you to get away (if nothing else, FOMO is a great motivator!).
Safe diving!