About our course

Available through PADI or SDI

Gain more confidence when you’re in the water. You don’t need any special skills or experience to take this course. This is one of the best scuba diving courses offered and every diver should participate in a Rescue Diver course!

The Rescue Diver course allows is a pivotal step in expanding a diver’s education and experience. At the Rescue Diver level you begin to look beyond yourself to consider the safety and well-being of other divers. This course consists of self-study and open water dives. The self-study portion is completed on your own time once you purchase the student course materials. We then meet with you to review the knowledge you gained from the materials and apply it during confined and open water dives at a couple of the local open water sites.

Our Rescue Diver course is a demanding course. However, any diver in decent physical shape should be able to complete it. You will expand the basic problem solving and accident prevention knowledge and skills you gained in your Open Water course and learn to manage more complex problems.

Once you complete this course you will:

1. Have an increased awareness of diver safety
2. Be able to anticipate and prevent problems, as well as manage them
3. Know specific rescue techniques and first aid specific to diving
4. Be able to manage diver emergency situations
5. Be one step closer to receiving a Master Scuba Diver rating

This is a course every scuba diver should complete. It not only makes you a more alert diver, but it helps you increase your confidence level as a diver and in general.

Prerequisites for this course

Advanced Open Water Diver or equivalent and Emergency First Response or CPROX1st (current CPR and First Aid are acceptable).

Prior to the course

Please visit Student Packets, download and complete all forms relevant to the course you are enrolled in (Adobe Reader required). Please write out Yes or No for each condition on the Medical Questionnaire. If you answer Yes to any of the questions, you must obtain a doctor’s release prior to beginning any in-water training.

Our schedule

Our Rescue Diver course is a unique experience. We (Rob & Jen) are both nurses and have over 30 years of combined experience in the health care field, most of that in emergency medicine. Class size is limited to 6 student divers. Less than 2 divers and the course will be postponed. We believe to get a full experience the class must have at least one buddy pair. The classroom portion is Friday evening before the course. We then meet Saturday morning to begin the water sessions. Plan on being at the dive site until around 6pm. We’ll meet back at the dive site Sunday morning to continue the water sessions. This day will also run until around 6pm. Between 8am and 6pm each day, we teach you different rescue skills. We will also throw in some scenarios throughout the course of each day. These scenarios are not announced. They will and can happen at anytime without warning. This makes it a much more realistic course.

What about classroom and pool sessions?

As stated previously, this is a self-study course. You must read through the manual and complete the knowledge reviews prior to the Rescue Diver course weekend. We review the knowledge reviews prior to the water portion of the course and conduct the classroom portion of the course during the water training. In other words, we discuss different rescue techniques and then put them into practice right away.

Standards don’t require pool sessions. The Rescue course consists of several skills sessions and open water sessions. We choose to do all sessions in confined open water that is adjacent to an open water site. This makes it a more realistic approach to the training. You learn the skills in confined open water and put them to use right there. It also allows us to transition from skill to skill easily and create a more fluid course.

By the way, we don’t yell “Pizza, Pizza” either. We make the course as real as it can be without having actual injured divers. This means we yell “Help”. Don’t worry, no one will be calling 911 or coming to our assistance. We inform everyone of the weekends we conduct Rescue training so they know it’s not real.

Come learn to be a better diver with us!

Required materials:

Student manual
Pocket Mask

See the Training Fees page for our fee.

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Already a Rescue Diver? Been a while since you went over your skills? Come out and complete a Rescue Diver Refresher course. Spend a few hours in the water reviewing and practicing skills. Come out during one of our Rescue Diver courses and refresh your rescue skills in the environment you’ll be using those skills!

Required materials:

Pocket Mask