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Imagine holding the gaze of the largest animal that has ever lived---the Blue Whale. Or touching down on the hull of a centuries-old shipwreck to connect with history. Even gliding through an underwater cave system to set eyes on a chandelier of stalactites no human has ever seen before. All of these incredible experiences are available to you as a scuba diver. Unlike many activities, diving is one that has few limits beyond those you choose for yourself. If you've been inspired to look into taking up the sport by the shows you've seen on tv, such as Blue Planet, Great Ocean Adventures, Wreck Detectives and the classic Cousteau and Hass films, you should know recreational divers actually do those things for real. Sport divers go to the same locations, make the same dives and experience the same thrill of exploration.

Scuba diving is not one activity, but a range. Learning to dive is just your introduction to a captivating realm that encompasses many intriguing and fascinating experiences. For many, just being underwater is satisfaction enough. Diving may be a pastime they enjoy casually now and again on holiday. For others, diving is a skill they use to pursue other interests, such as photography, marine biology and underwater archaeology. Families often choose diving as a non-competitive sport they can enjoy together. Some seek out high adventure and diving becomes a thrilling lifestyle choice leading to encounters with salt water crocodiles, great white sharks and even hippos. How far you take the sport is entirely up to you. See our experience section.

Becoming a diver obviously starts with learning to dive. This section is only an introduction to the Mavericks entry-level scuba courses. To learn more we recommend that you give us a call, or better yet, come in for an hour or so to discuss your training with us. Choosing with whom you will learn to dive is an extremely important decision. Your enjoyment of the sport, your personal safety and that of those with whom you will dive depends upon the quality of your own training. So, just like choosing your doctor, lawyer or financial advisor, we expect you'll want to take some care over selecting your instructor, dive centre and course.

Knowledge, Practice, Safety, Achievement:
The Foundations of The Mavericks Entry Level Scuba Course

Diver training is often presented as a product. It isn't. It's a service. Although the final result may be the same certification, the quality of the training you may receive varies considerably. Think of driving as an analogy---everyone has a license, but not everyone can drive well. At Mavericks we like to ask "do you want a card that claims you're a diver, or the skills that prove it?".

We run our scuba courses very differently to most other dive schools. Our reasons are outlined over the following paragraphs. Compare the level of information that we provide about our courses here with that usually provided on-line by diving schools and you'll see that we are very keen on sharing information. It's a theme that is at the heart of our courses---whether in the classroom, pool or ocean, we'll be sharing information and insights with you. We strongly suggest talking with and visiting a few other dive schools to meet their instructor teams and get a feel for how they operate. As a beginner, making these comparisons will help you in your decision making. See also Dive Training in the Dock.

Throughout this section you'll find links to feature articles, many about diving safety. These will give you more background information and helps explain our philosophies. It might seem a lot to go through, but then learning to scuba dive is a serious decision and you're probably keen to learn as much as you can. See our education section.

So what makes Mavericks Diving different and where do we feel our strengths lie?

Successfully completing a Mavericks Diving scuba course will result in you being awarded a diving qualification that is recognised internationally. This is basically a licence to scuba dive and any reputable dive operator will ask to see it as a proof you are a trained diver. Keep in mind that it is sensible to take further training to increase the range of conditions under which you can dive and to gain extra diving experience under supervision. An entry-level qualification is only a start and many diving environments and some of the best experiences will require a little more work before you are ready to take them on safely. We can help you with this. See Training Illusion.

The Mavericks team hold diving and instructor qualifications from many different training agencies and have seen great changes in how diving is taught over the decades. Our decision is to offer Mavericks students NAUI entry level and continuing education courses. We like NAUI's refreshingly non-commercial approach, exceptionally high instructor requirements and the reputation that NAUI brings to Mavericks. The National Association of Underwater Instructors was formed in 1960 to help standardize training across the USA. Prior to that different local training groups were springing up and there was no real consistency in the skills a diver learned or in how they were taught. NAUI itself emerged from the LA County Scuba Program which numbered some of the most celebrated diving pioneers in the world as members. NAUI took what they had learned and achieved in the USA to other countries soon after, becoming one of the first agencies to achieve international recognition for its diving qualifications. NAUI qualifications are immensely respected. Attaining them is not a given and a Mavericks student is expected to work hard to meet the standards. The Mavericks instructor team will ask you for a much greater commitment in time and enthusiasm than many dive schools; and will, in turn, commit to making your entry level course as interesting, rewarding and fun as possible. You'll really feel you've accomplished something special when you successfully complete your NAUI Scuba Diver course with us. We depend upon the divers we train to build our own reputation and that will only happen if the training you recieve from us is of the highest standard.

The Mavericks Diving training philosophies are founded in Steve Warren's, Andrew Pugsley's and Matt Crowther's own backgrounds. Steve began snorkelling in 1970 and made his first dive, aged eleven, in 1975. Largely self-taught on scuba, he eventually took formal training through the ASADA (Army Sub-Aqua Diving Association) in 1984. Two years later as a British Sub-Aqua Club instructor Steve served as training officer for his local BSAC branch. He taught at a BSAC school, later qualifying as a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) instructor and teaching PADI courses professionally. He is now a NAUI instructor. Steve has been in demand as an advisor and writer for a host of publications. Steve was Technical Editor of the book The UK Divers' Source. He served as a contributing editor to Dive International magazine (now Dive). Steve helped to develop consumer equipment testing of diving equipment for the magazine and led field-testing in the Red Sea and Gibraltar. He has also specialised in investigative reports into often-controversial issues of dive safety. He has written for Dive International, Dive, Diver, Scuba World, Underwater Photography Magazine, The Historical Diving Times and Freediving and Spearfishing News. Steve has been interviewed by the Sunday Times on underwater photography and is quoted in The Art of Diving on precision buoyancy control. Andrew Pugsley, known as AJ, was given the responsibility of setting up the Mavericks training arm. AJ took to scuba diving aged twelve. At fifteen he became a BSAC Assistant Instructor and taught students and teachers to dive at Dulwich College. He has diving qualifications from a range of training agencies including PADI, BSAC, NAUI and IANTD. AJ has also worked with decompression researcher Dr. Richard Moon at the Duke University Medical Centre hyperbaric unit in the States. He has travelled extensively, diving locations that include the Caymans in the Caribbean, the Maldives, Mauritius and South Africa in the Indian Ocean, Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific ocean, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and France in the Mediterranean, the Canaries, South Africa and Gibraltar in the Atlantic (SA and Gib both border two seas), Malaysia, in the Faroes, and closer to home, Ireland and much of the UK. He's is an accomplished underwater photographer with images published in 2excess, Maxim, Maxim (Czech), Gibraltar Magazine, Dive, Diver and UWP. AJ won the first Our world Underwater Scholarship competition for an underwater photographer in 2002 and has twice made presentations at the Visions in the Sea underwater photography festival. AJ is a NAUI instructor.

AJ has supervised numerous underwater photographic shoots for titles including FHM, Maxim and the Daily Mail. He has written for Dive International and 2excess, and completed a literature review on shark biology using his own images to illustrate. He has spoken on diving for photography clubs, and on science for schools, general audiences and Sky TV. AJ is co-presenter for the on-line underwater TV show, the Underwater Channel.

Matt Crowther started scuba diving unofficially at eleven with his father, qualified through the British Sub-Aqua Club at 14 (the then minimum age) and became a PADI instructor at nineteen. He taught professionally for two schools in the southwest then joined Ocean Optics, Mavericks' sister company, which specialises in underwater photography equipment. Matt spent a week shadowing an underwater film team at work on the BBC blockbuster Blue Planet in the Red Sea while training with Optics. Matt was just 23 when he was recruited to act as full-time technical editor for Dive magazine, the house journal for the British Sub-Aqua Club and the largest circulation diving publication in the UK. Along with undertaking wide ranging-assignments for Dive, he also co-presented a television series for divers on the Sky Magazine Channel. Matt was also brought in by Sky TV to present a feature on diving equipment for the Sky News feature Technofiles. His career in dive journalism also led to his writing specialty features for GQ Active among other high profile publications. Matt was also featured in the Independent for his work with the Diamond Reef Precision Buoyancy Program. He has photographed basking sharks off Cornwall, had close encounters with tiger and grey reef sharks at night on a scientific survey project off Saudi Arabia and has free dived with great whites.

The length of time that AJ, Matt and Steve have spent in diving has meant that they have seen a lot of changes in how training is conducted. Their experience of teaching for several agencies has, they believe, given them insights not easily open to instructors who are familiar with just one training regime. Steve, AJ and Matt feel that all training agencies have something to teach them and that that knowledge can be passed onto their own students to make them better divers. They continue to broaden their own skills and experience.

At Mavericks we work only with small student groups---far smaller than training agencies' maximum limits. The maximum number of trainees on a Mavericks entry-level scuba course is just four. Courses are led by a professional instructor working with a professional assistant (often another highly qualified instructor). A lot of skills are coached and assessed one-to-one. This ensures lots of personal attention to help you get your diving skills to the highest possible standard. It's important to find out exactly how many students will be taught at once on a scuba class when comparing our NAUI scuba course to other learn to dive courses.

Pool time is expensive and one way of cost-cutting to offer a cheap diving course is to restrict this. As it is in the pool that you learn and master fundamental diving skills you will depend upon in the future, we don't follow this line of thought. We schedule at least ten hours in the pool---far more than many dive centres. Because of our very low instructor/student ratios we are able to use this time extremely productively. This, we believe, results in our students achieving a greater mastery of key diving skills leading to greater comfort under the water and more fun diving.

When checking out our competitors, it's worth finding out how much time you will really spend in the water. You can easily work out how much attention you will actually receive if it's a large class and pool time is limited.

We don't just rely on hand signals and mime to teach you how to dive. Our instructors are equipped with commercial radiophones that allow us to talk to you underwater. This makes it much easier for you to learn your skills to a high standard because your instructor can speak to you while you're practicing them. This immediate feedback is invaluable - imagine learning to drive a car or just about anything else well using only a very basic sign language. Mavericks Diving uses a unique training facility---Action Underwater Studios---for our NAUI scuba courses. Action Underwater Studios is a specialist filming studio designed for movie crews to shoot in-water and underwater film sequences. Just entering the reception room and looking at the personally inscribed portraits on the walls from the celebrities who've worked here tells it's own story. Tomorrow Never Dies, The Bourne Supremacy, Sexy Best, The Phantom Menace and Harry Potter The Prisoner of Azkaban are just a few of the major motion picture productions that have all depended upon Action Underwater Studios for their success.

Mavericks Diving is extremely fortunate to have been invited to use Action Underwater Studios for our NAUI scuba diver courses. Our training philosophies helped Mavericks Diving secure use of the studio because we impressed the AUS company directors with our attention to detail and to safety. The Action Underwater Studios facility features a conference room where we hold our theory presentations. Individual changing and shower rooms are provided for your comfort. There's also ample car parking and a nearby overground train station. But the main attraction is the principle filming tank. 12 x 9 metres (40 ft by 30 ft) in area the tank is fully 6 metres (20 ft) deep. It means that we can really go to work helping you develop near perfect buoyancy control skills as part of your Mavericks Diving NAUI scuba course. With 6 metres available, you can properly learn to control your ascent and descent rates and simulate safety stops using Suunto dive computers and master snorkelling techniques. The Action Underwater Studios tank also provides a real sense of depth, making the transition to open water diving afterwards much easier than transferring from the shallow three metre and even two metre pools used by other dive centres.

NAUI actively encourages instructors to use their personal knowledge and experience to go beyond the basic syllabus. The NAUI Scuba Diver Course, like any beginners course, must be taught so that all of the skills the agency deems essential are taught and mastered. This is for your safety. We include additional exercises designed to build self-confidence in our students. The purpose is to increase your watermanship and your self reliance to make it easier for you to enjoy more challenging diving conditions and to better react to diving situations that are going wrong. The reality is that most divers will eventually have a "bad dive". We'd prefer you to be prepared for that day and for it to be no more than an annoyance when it comes. It's another reason we schedule lots of pool time. With less time we'd not only be rushed to get you through the core skills of the course, we would not have time to invest in these additional modules. Diving is an adventure sport. It carries risk. Each year there are deaths and expert estimates anticipate that half of all divers will encounter a panic situation at some point in their diving careers. At Mavericks we disagree strongly with playing down the safety aspects of diving. If you are looking for a 100% risk-free adventure sport, diving isn't it.

Learning from other people's mistakes is infinitely preferable to learning from your own. Our safety workshop examines diving incidents drawn from the British Sub-Aqua Club and Divers' Alert Network records. The discussion examines the cause, effect and outcome of real dives that went wrong, from minor incidents to multiple fatalities. We emphasise how almost all diving incidents are preventable and how it is possible to stop most incidents in their tracks early on before they can escalate into tragedies.

A Mavericks course emphatically does not attempt to make diving seem safer than it really is. The fact you have to take your own breathing gas with you should tell you something. Our safety presentation helps you to recognise and avoid hazards, while our emphasis on helping you achieve excellent personal diving skills prepares you properly for the adventure of open water diving.

While some dive centres gloss over safety concerns, read the disclaimer you'll need to sign to actually begin training with them and you'll see the hazards clearly spelled out... See When Luck Runs Out.

During your actual qualifying open water dives you'll be closely supervised by a professional diver who is comprehensively rescue trained. All entry level scuba courses place great emphasis on the concept of buddy diving: diving as a team to be able to provide assistance on the spot to your partner. As a NAUI qualified Scuba Diver, you can dive with another diver with the same grade. You are not required to be supervised. In the event of an emergency you may be the closest person to your buddy and your actions may save their life---but only if you have the skill to do so.

NAUI entry level courses differ from most others in that students are taught how to bring another diver from depth to the surface and carry out in-water expired air resuscitation (the "kiss of life"). This means that you are trained to respond immediately and decisively in the case of an emergency and can save valuable time that might be lost searching for the victim if you have to leave them on the bottom, ascend and call for help. The Health and Safety Executive, who govern professional diver training in the UK, permit NAUI students under training to dive with their instructor as a buddy pair after completing this training exercise. We teach this part of the course using purpose designed rescue training mannequins. These make it easier to practice getting an effective seal on the victim.

It's implicit in providing this training that you will be close to others, you will be more highly trained, and can provide further help including assisting with removing the casualty from the water and providing additional first aid and life support if required. Most open water divers will probably conduct their initial dives with more experienced divers near by or from professionally run dive centres or dive boats. The value of this basic training is the speed with which you can begin the rescue yourself.

We would always encourage our students to take a formal rescue workshop early on in their diving careers. A rescue workshop will teach you lots about accident avoidance, self rescue, towing another diver, removing the diver from the water in a variety of scenarios including onto beaches, boats, up ladders, over rocks and through surf. You'll practice searches to locate a missing diver and how to manage and control your rescue team to maximise the chance of a successful outcome.

Although some training agencies make snorkelling an option, and many instructors choose not to teach it, we do. Snorkelling helps build watermanship and self confidence. It's also an invaluable skill for working with some of the sea's most impressive animals, including whale sharks, whales and manatees. And, at many diving destinations, there's great snorkelling to be enjoyed between scuba dives! See My Life as a Jellyfish, Getting Started in Snorkelling, Silent Running, Watercolum.

It's something we enjoy teaching and it's included in your tuition fees, further increasing the value of our courses.

We provide you with all of the diving equipment needed for any of our courses apart from prescription eyewear. We ask only that you bring your own swimming costume and towel. Although some schools like you to purchase mask, fins and snorkel before learning to dive on hygiene and comfort grounds, we do not. The hygiene argument doesn't stand up as you'll be using loan wetsuits and regulators. The comfort angle also should not apply---if a dive school isn't going to loan you comfortable basic equipment, what's the rental life support equipment going to be like? It's also hard to make a judgement call on what is comfortable when you are just getting started. See Equipment Buying Guidelines.

We provide our students with only top of the line life support equipment. Our philosophy is simple---we don't dive with cheap kit ourselves, for very good reasons, so why would it be good enough for our clients? We issue you with the same equipment for pool training as you will use if you complete your open water skills with us. Our regulators are the ultra-high performance Aqua Lung Legend---one of the easiest breathing models available. Mavericks provide only Sea Quest buoyancy control devices to students. We've chosen to use the Pro Unlimited for men and, for ladies, the purpose designed Sea Quest Diva LX. These buoyancy jackets are each available in five sizes ensuring we get a perfect fit for each student. This is imperative for your comfort, as well as vital for proper control of your buoyancy underwater and at the surface. See also Alternative Air Sources.

If you choose to join us to complete your open water training, we will also provide you with a Suunto personal diving computer. An essential aspect of learning to dive safely is acquiring and practising proper dive planning skills. Unless you have equipment that lets you monitor your own depth and time underwater, you must blindly follow your instructor. This isn't the Mavericks way.

During your course you'll learn to set up your personal diving equipment in a specific way. This is the only practical method for us to teach a group. On an entry-level course we teach equipment skills that can be applied generally. Sometimes we'll show you kit options that reflect different viewpoints so you can see what works best for you. After you certify and start gaining diving experience, you'll probably want to buy your own equipment. This may well differ from what you learned on and you may prefer to configure it differently. Mavericks instructors offer equipment courses that let you find out more about how equipment functions, how to ensure it is suited to your diving goals and different ways to configure it. Our showroom offers an extensive range of quality diving equipment for you to look at. See the Mavericks' showroom. You can learn more about equipment.

Use of the equipment, together with the air you'll need, is included in your tuition fees.

Poor buoyancy control skills have been identified by leading dive safety experts from the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society, Health and Safety Executive and Divers' Alert Network as major contributors to diving incidents. We believe that many diving courses do not properly address these concerns by teaching only basic buoyancy control on entry-level courses and providing minimal practice time. Sometimes more advanced buoyancy training can be purchased as a separate mini-course. We think that's like learning to drive a car and then taking an optional braking module.

At Mavericks we use the Diamond Reef program developed by Buoyancy Training Systems Inc. It is a lot like an underwater obstacle course. Not only does it help you learn the tricks the pros use, it's a lot of fun. The Diamond Reef has been endorsed by leading dive safety expert Glen Egstrom and is used by NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) to train their scientific divers. You can read a review of the system in this article which appeared in the Independent.

The Sea Quest BCDs we provide and other specialist weighting equipment allow our students to learn for themselves the little techniques that make a big difference to how comfortably you can dive. You'll learn how to achieve neutral trim, so you'll be more streamlined and can swim more efficiently. This means you'll use less air and can enjoy longer dives. You'll develop spatial awareness, so you won't accidentally kick the coral or stir up a sand cloud.

A Mavericks learn-to-dive course includes a lot of time working on buoyancy skills. It's absolutely essential you have excellent personal buoyancy control if you are to have safe and enjoyable diving experiences. This course within a course is also included at no additional charge.

We do not believe in taking the instructor out of the classroom and replacing them with a CD-ROM. Our instructors have a lot of useful information to share, as underscored by their backgrounds. We use self-study course materials such as interactive CD-ROMS to help you get briefed on the basics. Our instructors will then elaborate on this information and help develop important background information during classroom discussions, illustrated with customised Mavericks PowerPoint presentations.

We have a selection of intriguing working models for talking you through the effects of diving on your body. This is a fascinating part of the course and we teach using specially crafted demonstrations made for universities to show you what is really happening---on a 30 metre dive for instance the pressure on your body would exceed by far the weight of a hatchback/SUV. Yet you'll barely be aware of that small fact when you are diving.

We provide our students with your own diving manuals and dive tables to keep after you've completed your course. We don't just loan them to you. Your NAUI Scuba Diver manual is a useful resource for you to refer to, especially during the early stages of your diving career. For example you may need to refresh your memory on reading dive tables or want to brush up on navigation skills. The NAUI Scuba Diver Manual is comprehensive, easy to read without dumbing down, well illustrated and has guides to help you focus on need to know information which helps you keep on track while studying. Having your own manual is a recommended safety practice. NAUI is the diver training agency of choice of the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas (USA) where the astronauts in the United States space program train for Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs) - space walks - in the world's largest pool that contains a replica of the International Space Station and an Orbiter cargo bay.

NAUI's alliance with the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory provides training materials, certification cards and collateral materials for their scuba program, and NAUI instructors are on staff to assure the safety and excellence of the NASA astronaut diver program.

In the United States, US Navy SEALs, Coast Guard rescue divers and other special military forces are trained to NAUI standards as part of their overall training with open and closed circuit rebreathers; the US National Parks Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) divers receive NAUI training and certifications.

Learning to scuba dive doesn't really end with earning your basic scuba certification. An entry level scuba qualification really only gives you some basic comfort and survival skills. It is more properly described as a licence to start learning. Becoming a better scuba diver requires a combination of further training to add scuba skills, time underwater to gain experience and taking measures to ensure you don't let your diving knowledge and skills slip.

Mavericks Diving London can help you meet all of these requirements while having lots of fun. As an entry level scuba diver we would strongly recommend you progress to the NAUI Advanced Scuba Diver level as quickly as possible. This will give you an additional six dives under the supervision of your NAUI instructor. You'll learn new skills while increasing the hours you have spent underwater. We'd then recommend you take a diving holiday. Go and enjoy 20 dives - have some relaxed pleasure dives without having to complete any skills. You'll further build your underwater time and your diving will become much more instinctive, After that we'd suggest looking into honing your training by taking the NAUI Rescue Diver workshop with us. This dive rescue training will help you to understand accident avoidance, learn dive accident management and provides extensive rescue skills that can make all the difference to another diver facing a life or death situation.

Keeping your scuba skills sharp with Mavericks Diving London is easy. We run comprehensive scuba refresher courses. And, in 2008, we'll be forming our Mavericks Diving Scuba Club. This means lots of pool time in the Action Underwater Studios movie tank for keeping your hand in. With 6 metres of water available, it's the very best indoor facility for scuba practice.

We've put a lot of thought into our entry-level scuba classes. They are the foundation stones to entering a realm that is truly unique. Each of the Mavericks team is addicted to the sport and diving has changed our lives. We hope you'll share in our adventure.  

See also:

• Sid's profile
• AJ's historical diving
• Meet the Mavericks team
• Diving medicals: information and contacts
• Download the courses booking form (editable pdf)
• For details of course dates go to the courses page