Open Water Diver

The standard entry-level scuba certification, qualifying a diver to dive independently with a buddy, typically to a maximum depth of 18 m (60 ft).

Open Water Diver is the entry level certification that turns a beginner into an autonomous diver. Once certified, you are qualified to plan and make no-decompression dives with a buddy, without a professional guide, typically to a maximum depth of 18 m (60 ft). Nearly every mainstream agency offers an equivalent course under a similar name, all aligned to the same ISO standard for autonomous divers.

The course has three parts: knowledge development covering pressure, equalization, buoyancy, and dive planning; confined water sessions where you learn core skills such as mask clearing, regulator recovery, and the CESA emergency ascent; and usually four open water dives where you demonstrate those skills in the sea or a lake. Most people complete it in three to four days, or longer at a club pace.

Your Open Water card never expires, and the dives you make during the course are the first entries in your dive log, the starting point of your diving history. Depth limits after certification are recommendations enforced by operators rather than law in most places, but they exist for good reason: the course prepares you for benign conditions similar to training, and experience beyond that is built gradually, dive by logged dive.