This week in Lembongan… A new young diver explores the reefs of Lembongan. Jack, a 10 year old, who completed his junior open water course with instructor Gwen, had a lot of fun getting his certification. Jack is an active snorkeler and surfer back in his home country of Australia but decided that that was not enough and wanted to get down underwater to explore the reefs.Â
Jack took a nice easy approach to the theory side of the course, by doing the PADI e-learning. This allowed him to work through the theory at his own pass with the help from the interactive course materiel online. Jack and his mother, Kirsty kept us up to date with Jacks progress online and he was super excited when he had finished all the theory. With all the theory done, Jack only had left to do the confined skills in our onsite pool and the 4 open water dives.
You may ask, what is the difference between a full open water diver and a junior open water diver? For students who are between the age of 10 – 14, they are certified as junior open water divers. What this means is that they need to dive with a parent or a PADI professional. For student divers that are 10 or 11 years old, they are able to dive to a max depth of 12 meters and for students 12 to 14, they are able to dive to 18 meters. Once the junior open water diver turns 15, they are automatically upgraded to a full open water diver. It is also possible for the diver to apply to PADI for a new certification card that does not have “junior” on it.
A few days ago, we brought our divers to Manta Point, where everyone was treated to an amazing experience with many manta rays, cleaning, feeding and mating trains. Everywhere the divers looked or everywhere the divers went on the dive site, there was mantas passing by. Some of our guests had such a great experience with the manta rays, that they sighted it as one of their best dives ever.
You guys are the best! That 10 year old had so much fun and learned so much with Gwen and Two Fish. Thank you for unlocking the beautiful world under the sea for him. And what a spectacular place to learn to dive! We will be back!
That is very young. Not possible overhere.
Linda – children are a pleasure to teach, and most of the time they are fearless! PADI allows children of age 10 and over to enrol in the Open Water Diver course, but they have to do everything that the adults do in order to certify 😉
Children sometimes chill faster than adults underwater, which is why a tropical environment lndonesia is ideal 🙂
The discussion is still open on this. The dutch NOB for that reason does not train children under 15. Organs and all. The chilling is one sign. It is not that they are not clever enough.