Athens Scuba

Complete Your PADI Certifications Right Here in Georgia!

Events

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Athens Scuba kick off 2023

Athens Scuba has had an eventful year of 2022 and 2023 looks even more exciting.

Besides having our shop now fully operational and stocked, we’ll have plenty of trips and opportunities to get everyone diving!

We started our year strong with a trip to the Springs with a few Open Water and Advanced Open Water students. We had a great weekend and everyone got certified.

This month we are having our biggest trip to the Florida Springs yet, with 19 divers total, 5 of them PADI Open WaterDiver students! On February 25th we’ll start to on our long awaited group trip to Thailand, for two weeks with one week liveaboard and one week exploring Thailand.

Beach in Thailand

The rest of the spring we’ll spend training new divers the basics at the Georgia Aquatic Center in Watkinsville and in the Florida Springs.

We’ll have another exciting group trip to Grenada in April/May and a trip to Cozumel in June.

Beach bar on Grenada

Our lake Jocassee season is going to start in the beginning of June. We’ll go to the lake every other weekend throughout the summer, until late in October. All dates are on the website.

After the big success of last years scuba summer camp, we’ve decided that we’ll do another this year from June 12th to 16th.

Our teenage summer camp participants with DM Susan and Instructor Ben

While going to the lake every other weekend we’ll kept on doing confined water session for our Open Water courses, PADI Discover Scuba Dives for people who’ve never been diving before and Enriched Air Nitrox classes, all at the Georgia Aquatic Center.

Michelle and Emily at their PADI Discover Scuba lesson, which they enjoyed a lot and after which they signed up for a PADI Open Water Diver course.

In September we’ll be going to Roatan, Honduras for another big group trip.

Resort we’ll stay in on Roatan

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Group Trip to the Florida Springs

Athens Scuba has successfully completed another group trip to the Florida Springs.

We had a total of 12 divers, some for fun diving, some for Open Water check out dives and some to start their Advanced courses.

We all arrived Friday evening and stayed until Sunday around noon. This trip was the first time we stayed at the cabins at the Blue Grotto Dive Resort.

The cabins are simple but clean and air conditioned. We occupied almost all of their cabin, brought a grill and had a great time spending time together.

After the Saturday morning dive at Blue Grotto and the afternoon dive at the Rainbow River we did a night dive at Blue Grotto, which marked for many of the divers the beginning of their PADI Advanced Open Water diver course.

Sunday morning we did our last dive at Devils Den, which was great, as always. On all our dives we beat the crowds and had the dive sites mostly to ourselves and we were able to make our way back to Athens around 11:00am.

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Scuba Summer Camp 2022

Athens Scuba is proud to announce that we are organizing Athens’ first ever Scuba Summer Camp for kids from age 10 to 17! We are excited to teach children a variety of knowledge and skills around scuba diving, snorkeling and swimming.

In this summer camp, required academics will be mixed with fun facts and educational videos. Water skills will be blended with fun activities, free diving and more, all of which will assist the future scuba divers in developing a better finning technique and airway control.

The camp will not fully certify the participant, but it will cover 2/3 of the full PADI Open Water Diver course. We will finish all knowledge and basic skill training with the children. The four check out dives required for full certification will be offered as an add-on later in the summer because the dives can’t be completed in a pool.

Requirements:

  • Minimum age is 10 years
  • Kids must be able to swim before the camp starts
  • Certain medical conditions will require a physicians sign off

The 5 Day Summer Camp from June 27th to July 1st 2022 includes:

  • Daily Supervision from 9AM to 3 PM
  • Two dive professionals in the water at all times while the campers are in
  • Life guard on duty whenever the campers will be in the water
  • Swim and snorkeling development, supervised by a professional swim coach on days one and two
  • Scuba knowledge development according to PADI standards
  • Scuba skill development according to PADI standards
  • Each child gets their own gear set with a Mask, Fins and Snorkel
  • Snacks
  • Water
  • Grill out Friday afternoon with parents

Parents are invited to join us Friday afternoon to check out the skills their children have learned and are encouraged to hop in and try scuba diving for free with us as well!

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Open Water class October 2021

We all had a blast last weekend at Lake Jocassee! We wrapped up the summer lake season with a great PADI Open Water Diver class. The water was the warmest of the the whole season, under water visibility was great and we welcomed two BRAND NEW PADI OPEN WATER DIVERS. We had lots laughter and 4 fantastic check out dives.

As usual we spread the check out dives over two days. This time we decided to drive back an forth, as we had the Saturday morning and Sunday later morning dives. Lake Jocassee is only 1 hour and 40 minutes from Athens and the drive, once coming off I85, is scenic and enjoyable. We got very lucky with the weather all weekend and dive conditions were as good as you can imagine in a lake.

Thanks to the great organization by our friends from Scuba Shop Spartanburg, the boats were ready and well prepared for our trips. The dive sites are only 10 minutes from the dock and after finishing all our skills on each of the dives, we had plenty of time to explore the divers and interesting under water world of Lake Jocassee.

We are proud to have certified our partners from the Georgia Aquatic Center in Watkinsville and that they are so exited about scuba diving.

Both of our freshly certified PADI divers will join us on our trip to St. Croix in the end of this month.

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Group DIVE Trip to St Croix

Athens Scuba is excited to announce that we set up our first dive group trip. From November 28th to December 5th we are going to St Croix in the US Virgin Island. 

This will be a fun and relaxed getaway that is great for newly certified divers and experienced divers alike!

St Croix is an uncrowded and beautiful island, that offers great reef- and wall diving, from shore and from boat. It is US territory, so no passport is needed and travel restrictions for COVID are easier to manage than many foreign countries.

The trip includes accommodations at Holger Danske Hotel, diving and rental cars (cars will be provided on a shared basis with designated drivers).

The hotel is conveniently located for diving, dining and a great time while being on your dive trip. There is an on-property restaurant and lots of other options around. The hotel has different room options.

We included the standard room. You have the choice between the one (King or Queen), or two bed (double) setup.

We can also accommodate checkout dives, refresher courses, and some specialty courses on this trip, please inquire separately for any course options.

Everyone at Athens Scuba is very excited to go on our first dive trip with a group and we can’t wait to introduce you to the fantastic underwater world surrounding St Croix. 

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First PADI Open Water class

July 25th marked a big day for Athens Scuba. We finished our first PADI Open Water Diver class at Lake Jocassee. 

We had 4 wonderful students who joined us and put their trust in Athens Scuba to get PADI certified. 

Every student opted for our Classic (City) Package for this class, studied via PADI eLearning and completed their knowledge development before we started the weekend check-out dives at Lake Jocassee.

A week earlier, we met at the Georgia Aquatic Center for pool training and PADI skill development. On July 15th and 16th we completed all of PADI’s skill requirements and got everyone comfortable in the water.

We met again July 24th at the lake to do our Open Water Dives 1 and 2. After we finished, we headed back to the Dive Shop for debrief paperwork and a great night hanging out together.

All of our students and Ben, our Athens Scuba PADI instructor, stayed the night at the camp ground at the Lake Jocassee Dive Shop, operated by The Scuba Shop, Spartanburg, SC.

The next morning we were back on the boat, where we had our gear stored from the day before. All skills were finished early in the day and we had enough time to explore a few of the many sights that the Lake Jocassee Dive sites have to offer.

After the dives were finished and all PADI certification requirements were more than met, we went back to the Dive Shop, finished up all paperwork and headed back to Athens.

We all had a great weekend, laughed a lot, welcomed four BRAND NEW PADI OPEN WATER DIVERS to the diving community and had a fantastic time at the beautiful Lake Jocassee.