Diving at MCP
At Marine Conservation Philippines we accomplish a lot of things underwater. Using scientific diving methods we monitor fluctuations in fish stocks and empower coastal communities with accurate information on the status of their reserves. We recover ghost nets and do various survey dives as requested by the local government units of Negros Oriental or the DENR (Department of Natural Resources). Additionally, we help to survey and establish marine conservation areas known as MPAs, Marine Protected Areas.
All of these underwater activities require SCUBA diving. We provide quality dive training for all our volunteers, and we of course warmly welcome volunteers who are already licensed scuba divers. The particulars of your involvement with the projects we run and the dive training you will get depends on how long you can stay with us. We offer all the core PADI courses as well as a number of PADI specialties, and if you have no prior dive experience or certificate, you’ll be using the first week to acquire your PADI open water diver license.
PADI Scuba Courses Offered
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Open Water Course
Your first scuba certification. Most dive shops finish it in three days. We spread it out and add extra experience dives, so buoyancy control is automatic by the time you start conservation diving. You qualify to dive to 18 meters with a buddy.
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Advanced Open Water
Five dives that take you to 30 meters and build your navigation skills. The deep and navigation dives are set by PADI. Where dive shops let you pick the other three, we choose them for survey work, usually peak performance buoyancy, safety and rescue, and deploying a surface marker buoy.
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Rescue Diver
The course experienced divers most often call pivotal, and often the most fun. Your attention widens from yourself to the whole team: spotting trouble early, giving oxygen and thinking clearly in an emergency. We usually run it over four days, which leaves room for extra scenarios so the new mindset sticks.
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PADI Specialties
Focus on one kind of diving with an instructor beside you. We teach Self-Reliant Diver, Enriched Air Nitrox and Deep Diver. Other specialties may be available when our projects call for them, or occasionally on request. Conservation dives come first here, so a specialty can stretch over a week or two, depending on how busy the schedule is.
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Technical Diving
Decompression diving with twinsets, sidemount and stage tanks, from Tec40 up to Tec Trimix. It is not a natural next step after recreational diving. We only train interns who need it for deep research, or volunteers staying at least four months, and reaching Tec50 or Trimix level typically takes 24 weeks.
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