New Pool Diving Qualification For Boat Owners Pending Completion Of The Microdive Basic Diver Course

Oct. 29, 2013 - PRLog -- The 3-metre Basic Diver course was developed for the RYA (Royal Yachting Association) to provide safety training for UK powerboat racers and is now widely recognised as an essential skill for all other boat users. Because there can sometimes be a delay before boat owners or crew are available to complete the final open water part of their training, the new certificate acknowledges their having achieved the first important steps on the training ladder.

       Microdive Ltd maintains that the new Pool Diver qualification is a significant development as trainee divers on traditional scuba courses will have nothing to show for having already learned a great deal. They are typically just classed as referral students pending completion of the open water dives needed to complete their qualification. Now, if Microdivers are unable to undertake that part of their course for any reason, they will still gain the satisfaction of receiving a card that proves they are qualified to scuba dive safely and competently in a swimming pool without supervision.

       Microdiving was devised in the UK by Rob Hart who realised that the traditional method of training new scuba divers was no longer viable in the modern market. “Teaching a beginner to dive to 18-metres from the outset is inappropriate and unnecessary” he said. “It’s the equivalent of new motorists being taught to drive a heavy goods vehicle when they will only ever want to use a car. Eighteen metres is quite deep, dark and, for many beginners quite scary. There is a lot that must be learned to dive safely at that depth and that is why traditional open water courses are so expensive and take so long to complete.”

       “Microdiving breaks the scuba experience down into bite-size chunks that do not need as much technical knowledge to be enjoyed safely. This means that people can be trained to dive to 3-metres in a day or to 9-metres in two days. If the Microdiver finds later that 9-metres is not deep enough, an 18-metre open water course run by any of the recognised training agencies will satisfy their ambitions. The main thing is that Microdiving enables anyone to enjoy some level of scuba diving without making the serious commitment towards an 18-metre open water course. We have now broken scuba diving down into its most basic elements by creating a qualification that proves a person’s ability to scuba dive in a swimming pool unsupervised down to 3-metres,” said Rob Hart.

       Microdive Ltd is a scuba diver training agency approved by the Offshore Diving Department of the UK government’s Health and Safety Executive. The courses represent the lowest ever cost for learning to dive in the UK as would-be scuba divers can now receive full training and an internationally valid qualification in one day for £149.This price drops even lower to £120 when the training courses are booked for groups of four or more. The charges are claimed by Microdive Ltd to be roughly one third of the price of a traditional scuba course while also taking a fraction of the time needed to obtain the diving certification.

       Because Microdiving is conducted in shallow water, knowledge of complex decompression theory and related safety procedures is not required. This is how it has been possible to reduce the training curriculum without depriving trainees of the knowledge they need for diving safely.  Students enrolling on the Microdive Basic diver course receive a training pack containing a 50-page manual which contains all of the diving theory they need to understand before entering the water. They can study this in their own time before answering a questionnaire, also in their own time, that will demonstrate their understanding of what they have read. This is followed by an in-pool session where they are taught practical techniques such as buoyancy control and clearing a flooded mask. The course is completed with two 30-minute dives in open water such as the sea or in lakes like those at the National Dive Centre in Leicestershire or Andark Diving near Southampton, UK. The successful completion of the open water dives will conclude the training and secure the qualification for the new diver.

For more information visit; www.microdive.com and www.mini-b.com

-ENDS-

For sales information contact:

Robert Hart, Microdive Ltd, Mini B Shallow Water Scuba Products Ltd. Unit 2, Kings Close, Charfleets Industrial Estate, Canvey Island, Essex SS8 0QZ, United Kingdom.   Tel: +44 (0)1268 681167