SSI Training

Scuba Schools International, or SSI in short, is one of the best know international certification agencies. SSI has a very strong belief that diving is as much about academics as it is about the experience level of the diver. Because of this SSI has two forms of recognition, firstly further academic training and secondly a levels of experience system.

At AHA, we offer the complete range of SSI courses. Below are the most popular courses and what they entail:

Open Water Diver

Your Open Water Diver Course is the basis for all future diving and is therefore one of the most important courses you will do.

The Open Water Diver Course teaches you about what to expect from your gear, the physics behind diving as well as the skills needed to dive safely and how to enjoy your diving experiences.

The training, presented by experienced instructors, is primarily focused on safety and student enjoyment and is done to an international standard, which ensures that your qualification will be recognized and accepted at all the reputable dive destinations in the world. Training can take place over a 1-week period consisting of theory which can be in one of three ways; formal class sessions, homestudy or E-online (thanks to technology, distance learning is no problem) and confined water training is then done in a heated pool. This adds up to a total of approximately 20 hours of instruction. The next step is the open water certification, which consists of five inland, open water dives.

Stress & Rescue

The stress and rescue course is as much about self discovery as it is about helping others.

You will learn to recognise stress in yourself or in other divers and the basics of how to deal with these situations. You will also learn more about our own comfort zones.

The rescue part of the course is focussed on incident management. This course is usually coupled with the Divers Alert Network (DAN) Basic Life Support for Professionals (BLS Pro) and Oxygen Administration (O2 Admin). This combination creates a solid base for divers to move into leadership roles. It also ensures that you are the type of dive buddy that everyone will be willing to dive with.

Advanced Open Water Diver

SSI describes an advanced open water diver as someone who has done an open water diver course, four specialties and has 24 dives. SSI is unique in that it requires certain experience levels for all qualifications.

AHA offers a standard advanced package made up of Deep, Night, Wreck and Navigation.

Alternatively you can customise your advanced course by choosing the specialties that suit your diving needs

Other specialties include:

•Enriched Air Nitrox
•Underwater Photography
•Dry Suit Diving
•Equipment
•Altitude diving
•Computer Diving
Dive Control Specialist

Leading a group of divers, especially a group with new divers, is a big responsibility; but it is also one of the greatest joys in the world. Being able to share the experience of the dive with people is only surpassed in satisfaction by the joy of helping a diver in training through a skill that they experience difficulty with.

The extra knowledge obtained in this training, enables our dive leaders to deal with a variety of more advanced leadership situations such as class presentations, assisting with poolwork and qualifying dives in the open water. As an SSI Dive Control Specialist, you are also certified as an Assistant Instructor which enables you to teach certain specialties, sush as photography, equipment, etc, as well as present Scuba Skills Updates, Try Scuba and Snorkelling courses.

Instructor

Do you like to share your knowledge with people? Would you like to own your own business?

The Instructor course teaches you how to effectively carry information across in a classroom, pool or open water situation, as well as teaching you about the business of diving.

The Instructor course is a very comprehensive course which will prepare you for every learning situation. Once you are certified as an Open Water Instructor, you can further your education to include teaching the Specialty or Advanced courses, Dive Leader training and eventually even train new Instructors.