Scuba Certification on Mariner

[thedog01]

For anyone considering the PADI Scuba certification on MOS, I just did it and would be happy to answer questions. It does take a fair bit of time (1/2 day in pool, 1/2 day reading your text, most of an afternoon watching videos and then 1/2 day excursion for the open water parts), but it was a great way for me to get certified. The default package gets you a PADI SCUBA Diver certification (2 open water dives, no dive tables or navigation skills), so you can only go to 40 ft and need to dive with a dive professional. To get the full open water certification, it is 2 more dives, another couple of hours in the pool and watching videos and $150. If you did that, you would be spending most of your days during the middle of the cruise doing SCUBA stuff. Depends on what you want to do with your vacation.

 

The staff were quite professional and good about the instruction. It was fun, but the pace of learning was that of the slowest student. We were in a couple of groups of 4 students per instructor.

 

When you are done, they give you $100 off the price of a set of SCUBA gear in the on-board shop. About $800 for reg set, BCD & depth/pressure gauge. You need to have your own mask and snorkle, which you can buy from them, but they have a limited selection.