Reviews of the best places to go scuba diving in the world:

Scuba diving is available around the world in exotic places which are mostly untouched by traveling tourists. Most tourists prefer to stay on the white sandy beaches of resorts and remain close to hot tubs and pools with elaborate waterfalls and slides. The more avid water lover wants to explore the underwater worlds that exist with colorful fish, beautiful reefs, and ancient boat wrecks. The more remote the destination, the more likely the scuba diving will be that much better. You want to go to places where few people venture to and therefore the wildlife is still in its "virgin" state. Places like Fiji, Belize, Tahiti, and the Galapagos offer scuba diving experiences that will last a lifetime. Fijidiving.com is a great website that will help you learn what Fiji resorts offer scuba diving adventures and programs. The best Fiji Scuba Diving is through the dive shops on Treasure Island, Beachcomber Island, Musket Cove Resort and Malolo Island Resort. Full services are also provided to Navini and Tavarua, Namotu Island Resort, Wadigi Island Resort, Bounty Island Sanctuary Resort.

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Hawaii is a popular destination for scuba divers, and specifically they congregrate to Kauai. DiveKauai.com is a reference site with information about diving programs offered through Dive Kauai Scuba Center, Snorkel Adventure Tours, Kauai Nitrox Divers, Sunrise Scuba Adventures and Adventure Travel Kauai. You can also take dive courses on Enriched Air/Nitrox Diver, Overhead Environment/Cavern Diver and DPV Diver. Their Discover Scuba Diving - an Introduction to Scuba course gives you 1 Tank dive, All Scuba equipment, shore dive for $105. For more experienced divers they offer a Ni'ihau/Lehua Rock Boat Dive - 3 tanks including all scuba equipment - May-Sept for $295. You can rent scuba diving equipment from them or bring your own. Fathomfive.com is another excellent dive team in Kauai that offers the only 6 passenger dive boat to Niihau Island. You can do a night shore dive for $65 (includes lights, briefing, snacks, drinks and 1 dive). Keep in mind that it doesn't take weeks to finish a scuba diving course, so you can always learn in a resort pool and within hours be out in a safe open water environment enjoying the underwater wildlife that millions of people never see. Scuba diving is safe and very inexpensive compared to other excursions offered at resorts.

Scuba Diving Vacations:

With worldwide travel made so easy these days, scuba diving destination vacations are becoming more and more popular. Just jump on a plane and a few hours later you are in Belize or Honduras. Scuba diving vacations are offered at resorts all over the world, but some places are better than others. We found an excellent website at Scubadivetravel.com with resources on dive resorts, discount scuba diving vacations, top dive travel agencies. They consider the best scuba diving vacations to be in Australia, Belize, Caicos-Turks, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Curacao, Fiji, Galapagos, Hawaii, Honduras, Indonesia, Micronesia, Oman, Solomon Islands, St. Maartin, and Tahiti. They have a great section on "Featured Scuba Diving Vacation Packages & Resorts" with specials to Fiji - Matangi Island Resort and Hawaii - Kauai Sands Resort. Scuba diving in Kauai (mentioned above) is the top destination for divers but those wanting a quieter environment can go to Grand Cayman or Costa Rica. Of course, if you can travel further, we say go to Fiji. The waters are crystal clear and the reefs and fish are spectacular. We stayed at the Matamanoa Island Resort.

Scuba Diving Lessons - What will you learn:

PADI, or the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, is the best place to start. See their website at Padi.com. There are PADI locations around the world ready to teach you the basics in scuba diving. They base scuba diving instructions on 3 phases - Knowledge Development, Confined Water Dives and Open Water Dives. During the knowledge development stage you learn basic procedures and how the water pressure affects your body. You also learn how to choose the best equipment and what to consider when planning dives. You will be required to read the 5 sections of the PADI Open Water Diver Manual and watch the video. After taking a short quiz (and passing it), you move on to the "confined water dives" where you can develop your basic scuba diving skills in a pool or body of water that closely matches the conditions of a pool. You will learn how to set up your gear, get water out of your mask without surfacing, and practice emergency skills like sharing air. 5 contained water dives should build upon each other so that you are ready for an open water dive. You must at least 10 years old and be accompanied by an adult to enter a PADI class. There are a few physical requirements like being able to swim 200 meters and tread water for 10 minutes. I was lucky enough to do a basic scuba diving course in Fiji years ago on my honeymoon and now I can enjoy scuba anywhere I go. It's truly amazing the underwater life you see and I highly recommend the sport to anyone.

Scuba Diving Equipment - Scuba Diving Gear:

In order to be safe in the water and enjoy yourself, you should have some basic scuba diving gear. Knowing how the scuba diving equipment works is very important since it will help keep you confident while underwater. During your scuba diving certification training, you will learn about scuba diving equipment and how to assemble it and use it responsibly and safely. The amount of time spent on how the scuba gear work is minimal though, so it will be up to you to get thoroughly comfortable with scuba equipment on your own. Someone just starting out in scuba needs 5 essential items since they are personal and quite often need to be fitted. They are a scuba mask, scuba booties, swin fins, snorkels, scuba belts and scuba weights. Most dive shops will not rent these items, you will need to buy them. A wetsuit tends to be the next thing that scuba divers buy since they are fairly custom fitted as well. You need be both comfortable and warm while underwater and a solid wetsuit should provide that. Other items scuba divers might buy are BCDs (buoyancy compensation devices) which gives you control over your buoyancy, gauges, and scuba regulators. For the most avid scuba divers, a scuba tank is the last piece of equipment you might buy. They are easy to rent from dive shops where someone else will do the cleaning, tests, and inspections, but some divers prefer to handle all the details themselves. You can buy all the scuba diving gear you want online at Scuba.com. They carry snorkels, spearguns, tanks, underwater cameras, compressors, dive skins, fins, gauges, gloves, hoods, buoyancy compensators, weights and belts, wet suits, knives, masks, Hookay systems, and regulators. They have the best selection that we found and you can order scuba equipment via the internet or through their 800 #.

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