You are here: gap-year-diving /

Gap Year Diving

Gap year diving is an area of speciality for us. If you are interested in exploring the underwater world on your gap year, we have plenty of diving programmes and being a company run by experienced professional divers we are happy to assist you find the right course.

Become a Gap year diver how to choose the right gap year diving course for you.

Choosing a Gap year diving programme is a great way to spend your gap year.

 There are lots of different options open to you if you wanted to get involved with becoming a gap year diver and plenty of gap year diving destinations to choose from whether that be a Koh Tao Gap Year (one of the most popular gap year diving destinations) or placements in Africa, Australia, the pacific Caribbean and more.
So how do you decide where to go and what to do? There are various consideration that your might want to think about before choosing a gap year company to assist you with a course.

Choosing a diving agency

Firstly you need to decide which diving agency you want to learn to learn with. So to make this clearer there are several different diving organisations out there that run courses training you have to become a diver safely. The main ones are PADI and SSI although other agencies like BSAC are also popular. These training body’s all follow similar curriculum's so do not worry too much about the course content.

To be clear the “agency” is not the same as the dive shop or dive school, as some are able to train people in several different agencies certifications. By far the most popular and well know agency is called PADI.

Deciding where to go

Next you need to decide where you want to go to do your dive training. It is a big world out there with thousands of unique and cool gap year diving destinations to choose from, some places have their advantages over others, so factors such as costs and personal interests will play a factor.

If you are just looking to learn to dive on your gap year and do a basic open water course, you may just choose to do this where ever is convenient along the way, but just allow yourself enough time (4 days) to do the course and make sure you are not flying within 24 hours of diving, so check your itinerary carefully.

If you wanted to spend a lot longer in one place mastering you diving skill, then you should consider doing the Divemaster course. The Divemaster course is the most popular gap year diver course for good reason. No other gap year diving programme allows you to spend so much time underwater, all included in the price.

Some places are cheaper than others with Thailand being one of the cheapest places to do your Divemaster, specifically the (Koh Tao Divemaster),however this does not necessarily make it the best although it is still extremely good.

Due to the popularity of diving in Thailand, the marine life does suffer as a consequence, so it is likely that you would see more marine life if you did your Divemaster in the Philippines, but this costs a touch more. You can also do your Divemaster in Australia, however this is again far more expensive that diving on an Asia gap year.

You can also complete your Divemaster in Africa; this is a great option if you are into shark diving, but bewared you can easily come up against tiger sharks and hammerheads. Whilst this is not dangerous if you know what to expect, it can make you panic if you are not prepared to see them! A softer way of seeing great white sharks is to go shark cage diving in South Africa

Xtreme Gap Year has a range of Gap year diver programmes and the in house expertise to be able to explain the intricacies of diving on your gap year before you set out. So if you are considering a gap year involving diving, give them a call.

Gap Year Diving Summary