It’s been said that scuba diving is more than just a sport or recreation. It’s a state of being – and a state of becoming. Being divers makes us different. It makes us special. As divers, we see and do things few can even imagine (and fewer still experience). We discover the true nature of Planet Earth – the Water Planet – and how critical this precious resource is to our survival.

At International Training (SDI/TDI/ERDI), we know all of this from first-hand experience. Diving has taken us to breathtaking coral gardens in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Ocean. It’s brought us face to face with gigantic (but surprisingly gentle) whale sharks off the Galapagos. It’s taken us to sunken shipwrecks – some centuries old – in every corner of the globe. It’s taken us hundreds of metres back in stalactite-filled underwater caves, where we discovered the remains of a 12,000 year-old Mayan, one of the first humans to inhabit the Western Hemisphere. It’s allowed us to hear humpback whales serenade one another off the coast of Maui. Yet some of our best scuba experiences have taken place in lakes, rivers, quarries and beaches close to home.

Learn to Dive with real-world diving procedures.

So incredible have all of these experiences been, that we’ve made diving our careers. As scuba diving educators and dive boat captains, we’ve taken thousands of people diving in the Caribbean and Pacific. We’ve seen, first hand, what it is divers can do to make their experience safer and more enjoyable. (We’ve also seen a few things you might want to avoid.)

It’s these lessons we’d like to share with you now. The fact that we have so much real-world experience (we employ a higher percentage of licensed, 100-ton dive boat captains than any other scuba diving training organization) makes learning to dive the International Training way different.

The way people dive and the equipment they used has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Unfortunately, the way most people learn to dive has not. For us, the fact “it’s always been done this way” just isn’t good enough. So we developed a way you can learn to dive that reflects real-world technology and real-world diving procedures. The result? Diving courses that are more effective and more enjoyable.

Welcome to our world. (It is, after all, your world, too – though you may be about to discover its true nature for the first time.) We hope the experience is every bit as special for you as it is for us.