“You helped me realize my dream of getting certified”.....Belinda, California

Due to instructor requests, PADI, in recent years, has relaxed some of it’s certification course standards, giving instructors greater flexibility in how they conduct the course. In theory, this means the course could potentially be completed in a shorter time frame than in the past. In reality, it’s almost impossible to properly certify someone in less than 4 days, relaxed course standards, or not. That being said, you’ll find that most advertised PADI certification courses on Maui are based around a 3 day time frame for completion. The question is, can you really get certified in only 3 days? The answer, surprisingly, is yes, although it would be extremely difficult or next to impossible under most circumstances to do so. There simply isn’t enough time, given the amount of course work required. To illustrate our point, let’s look at the 5 phases of PADI certification:

Only one scenario exists that could allow a certification course to potentially finish in 3 days: A student has pre-purchased and read the entire course manual prior to arrival, and has already tried scuba before, via the introductory Resort Course lesson, at some point in the past. Right from the start, the course would proceed at a more accelerated pace than normal. It’s a scenario every instructor dreams of, but, unfortunately, in real life, rarely ever occurs. The truth is, 99% of students arrive without the course manual, having never tried scuba before. The instructor starts the course from scratch, giving students the course materials right out of the gate. Imagine how time consuming the teaching process becomes, both in and out of the water, with multiple students in the class.

Dive companies on Maui market a 3 day certification course for 2 primary reasons: First, they know that tourists stay an average of 7 days on Maui, and don’t want to spend their entire vacations getting certified. Second, the more students they can turn over in the least amount of time (known as “Turning & Burning” in the dive business) the more $$$’s they can generate in the process. Unfortunately, in an effort to save time, the course must be conducted at a whirlwind pace in order to finish in a 3 day time frame. As a result, the following PADI course standards sometimes get sacrificed at your expense:

Anyone who has any experience in the dive business knows that corners get cut all the time, and, while PADI does have a quality assurance program in place, it requires it’s own instructor members to file incident reports if they witness a violation. In the real world, how many times do you think that happens?

At this point, you may be asking yourself why you should care about any of this stuff, as long as you get certified. We’ll answer that question, by revealing The Number 1 reason scuba certification needs to be taken seriously.....Very seriously.