Welcome to Vancouver Scuba Diving School. You want to experience the strange, otherworldly undersea environment... and we'd like to convince you that our private, customized PADI course is your smartest investment in proper training. 

Our website provides prospective divers with valuable information and insights into the realities of learning to dive. Whether you choose to train privately with us or in a dive shop group course, a thorough browsing of this site will help you to make an informed decision. 

Cold water diving is an extreme sport. Train accordingly.

 

Diving in the tropics vs diving in Vancouver

not Vancouver diving

not Vancouver diving

  • The PADI Open Water Diver course is the most popular entry-level diving course in the world.   
  • This mass-market, instantly gratifying group course is mainly sold to tropical tourists and vacationers, using an aggressively cheap price-point business model that produces marginally skilled "certified" divers in a very short time. 
  • The certification enables you to rent equipment, dive with or without a professional guide, and take more courses.
  • A single PADI instructor can teach up to 8 Open Water students in a group. This ratio is based on diving in tropical conditions: warm water, boat diving, light weight gear and underwater visibility that's good enough for an instructor to see everyone in the group simultaneously.
  • This very same commoditized group course is sold in Vancouver dive shops.
Vancouver diving

Vancouver diving

 

  • But...unlike in the tropics, diving in Vancouver is an extreme sport. Cold water, shore diving, heavy gear and limited "viz" make learning to dive in Vancouver much more physically, mentally and emotionally challenging for both the students and the professionals.
  • Despite harsh cold water conditions, most Vancouver dive shops offer an off-the-shelf, commoditized Open Water course at an artificially low, marginally profitable price point per student, and maximize the group size. Large groups serve to seriously limit the amount of time that an instructor can devote to any individual student diver: averaging less than an hour in the pool and 15 minutes underwater in the ocean.
  • Most freshly certified Open Water divers will never dive again in BC after finishing a group course, mainly owing to a lack of skills and confidence.  

 

Research reports have shown that inadequate training creates dependent divers, unable to think for themselves, lacking knowledge, experience and self-sufficiency to solve problems and manage risks competently. Certified divers with fewer than 20 logged dives account for upwards of 60% of all dive fatalities.

Our private scuba courses follow a more enlightened and thorough training model. It's safer, the training goes far beyond the minimum PADI standards that you'll get in a group course, you'll have the instructor's undivided attention and mentorship, and you'll develop at your own natural pace. 

 

Vancouver Scuba Diving School is a diver training program, not a retail dive shop.

Our training model is client-centered and tailored to BC's extreme diving conditions.

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Before you decide to sign up for any scuba course, please read our Open Water course details, browse our Blog where we discuss real-world diving issues that you'll face as a certified diver, take 10 minutes to read  Understanding Risk, review this Diving Suitability Self-Assessment,  then make an informed decision.

Divemastering - 2 tank day trips

 

  • We offer fully divemastered two-tank Howe Sound Day Trips  at any time and discounted multi-day packages.
  • For the convenience of visitors to Vancouver we provide all transportation from your hotel and organize the gear on your behalf.
  • Check out the photo galleries around the website and link to our You Tube videos  for impressions of great BC and tropical diving.

More About Us

  • VSDS is not a conventional brick-and-mortar dive shop. Rather, we maintain relationships with these shops which supply us with all the equipment and offer our clients discounts and deals on gear rentals and purchases. Contact US
  • We collaborate with Cooldives, the great BC diving vacation portal.
  • You can follow VSDS on Facebook to see new videos and photo galleries.  Please like us. Link to Facebook Page