So Many Requirements?

This weekend, our season shall begin! With that in mind, we wanted to take a moment to explain why we ask so much from our divers before heading on the boat to dive in Scapa Flow.

Image Copyight of South Park ©

The first question we'll ask of you is whether you're PADI Advanced Open Water (or equivalent). The reason for this is, all of the German High Seas Fleet sit close to the 30 meter mark, so if you hold an Open Water Certification (which qualifies you down to 18m) you'd have a very unexciting dive seeing nothing but green water and seabed, I'm afraid. But don't worry if you don't have this yet, we can easily get you through it here, all whilst exploring some awesome wrecks at the same time.

If you tick that box, the next question we'll ask is if you have your dry suit certification? We do all of our dives here in dry suits due to the water temperature, and if you've not used them before, the different techniques required can take a bit of time to get comfortable with. So if you answer no, we'll ask you to join us for a day or two at the Churchill Barriers, where we can teach you how to safely dive in them. Again this is all done whilst exploring some awesome British WW1 and WW2 shipwrecks, so loads to see, and all with a max depth of 11m, so if you're a bit up and down then it's a nice safe environment to do so.

Then finally, we'll ask if you're hiring equipment from us or bringing your own? If you're hiring kit from us, we'll ask you to do a days guided shore dives before heading out on to the boat. This is to make sure we can get you in correctly fitting gear, make sure you're properly weighted and that the weight is in the proper place to keep you nice and trim before heading on to the deeper wrecks. Another factor we consider into the mix, is that we use wing and backplate setups along with long hose regulators, which many people haven't used before. It is always an extra thing to think about, using different equipment, and we'd rather divers have a couple of dives at a shallower depth to get used to this before heading into deeper waters. Even if you answer yes to all of these questions and have your own equipment, we still recommend a day at the shore just because we think our shore diving sites are also super cool.

All we want is to keep our divers safe and to make the most of enjoying their time diving in Orkney. These might be a lot of things to demand, but in our experience, it makes things go smoother which means seeing more cool things and enjoying the whole process.