Most people who fancy trying diving assume there is more standing in the way than there really is. No experience, no equipment, no swimming club background. The barrier is usually just not knowing what the first step looks like.
There are two ways in, and both are built for people who have never breathed underwater. Here is what you need, what it costs, what happens on the day, and the handful of mistakes worth avoiding at the start.
Try Dive or full certification: the two ways in
Everyone starts with one of two things.
A Try Dive is a single guided dive with an instructor beside you the whole way. No theory, no exam, no certification at the end. You get kitted up, you learn to breathe, and you go and look at a reef or a wreck. If you have ever wondered whether diving is for you, this answers it in an afternoon. You will see it called two things: Discover Scuba Diving is the PADI name and a Try Dive is the SSI name. Our instructors teach under both, so you can do it either way.
A certification course is the route if you already suspect you are going to like it. The Scuba Diver certification takes a single day and qualifies you to dive with a professional. The Open Water certification takes three to four days, includes four open water dives, and qualifies you to dive to 18 metres with a buddy, anywhere in the world, for life. Our instructors are qualified with both SSI and PADI, so you choose which certification you leave with.
Neither asks for any previous experience. Your instructor covers the equipment, the hand signals and the safety procedures before you go anywhere near deep water. If you are weighing up the two, we compare them side by side.
Do you need to know how to swim?
You need to be comfortable in water rather than good at swimming.
For a Try Dive, being relaxed at the surface is enough. Your BCD holds you up without any effort on your part, and an instructor stays within arm’s reach for the whole dive.
For a certification course the standard is specific: swim 200 metres unassisted, then float or tread water for ten minutes. There is no stopwatch and no technique to master, and any stroke counts. If you are happy in the deep end of a pool, you will pass it.
And if the water itself is the worry rather than the diving, snorkelling is a gentler place to start.
How old do you have to be to start diving?
Children can start at 10 with both SSI and PADI, on junior programmes with shallower depth limits and closer supervision.
At the other end there is no upper limit at all. What matters is health rather than age, and it is completely normal to see someone earn their first certification in their sixties. If you can manage a brisk walk uphill without trouble, you can almost certainly dive.
Are there any medical requirements?
Most people are cleared with a form and nothing more.
Before your first dive you fill in a standard medical questionnaire covering asthma, heart conditions, recent surgery, ear problems and medication. Answering yes to something does not rule you out. It means a doctor signs it off first, and in the large majority of cases they do.
The ones worth checking early, because they need proper clearance rather than a tick box, are asthma and any history of collapsed lung or ear surgery. If either applies to you, speak to a diving doctor while you are still planning the trip rather than on the morning of the dive.
What actually happens on your first dive
The day is calmer than most people picture it.
You arrive, fill in the paperwork and meet your instructor. They run through the kit, how the regulator works, how to clear your mask and the handful of hand signals you will actually use. You get fitted for a wetsuit, fins and mask, which takes longer than you expect and matters more than you expect.
Then you go into shallow water. You breathe from the regulator standing waist deep, get used to the strange feeling of inhaling with your face underwater, and repeat a skill or two until it is boring.
Only then do you descend, slowly, equalising your ears on the way down. The part nobody predicts is how fast it stops feeling odd. Most people forget they are breathing underwater within about three minutes and spend the rest of the dive watching fish.
How much does it cost to start diving?
A Try Dive in Malta costs €95, with all equipment, the instructor and the dive itself included.
The Scuba Diver certification is €330 with SSI or €380 with PADI. The full Open Water certification is €550 with SSI or €600 with PADI, covering equipment, learning materials and the certification. The gap between the two agencies is a licensing cost rather than a difference in what you learn.
What is worth comparing is not the headline figure but what sits behind it: how many students share one instructor, how old the equipment is, whether materials and certification fees are included, and whether the price holds once you arrive. A course with six students per instructor is a different product from one with two, even when the price looks similar.
What makes a good place to learn
Warm water, clear water, little current and short distances. That is the whole list, and it is why Malta has become one of the most popular places in Europe to learn.
Visibility here often passes 30 metres, which sounds like a detail until you are the student who can see their instructor at all times. The entries are sheltered, so a first dive rarely involves fighting anything. The season runs all year. And because nothing on the island sits more than about forty minutes away, you spend your time diving instead of travelling to dive.
If you want the longer argument, we have written about why Malta ranks among Europe’s best diving destinations.
Mistakes beginners make
Nearly all of them come from moving faster than your skills.
- Choosing a centre on price alone
- Skimming the theory instead of understanding it
- Buying equipment before you know what you like
- Going deeper than the certification allows
- Letting a year go by before the next dive after certifying
The last one is the most common and the most expensive. Skills fade fast. If you certify on holiday, book something within a few months, even a single guided dive, before the habits go cold.
Your first dive is closer than you think
There is no build-up to this and nothing to tick off first. You could breathe underwater for the first time tomorrow.
If you want to test the idea, book a Try Dive. If you already know where this is heading, the Open Water course takes three to four days and you fly home certified for life. We run both every day of the year, in small groups, from Portomaso Marina in St Julian’s.
