Hawaiian Diving Adventures — Local services in Hawaii

I got my OWC with HDA. Overall, I had an amazing experience. My instructor was Andrew and he's an awesome teacher! Doing the certification with SSI instead of PADI allows your instructor to really give you a personalized experience, spending more time on improving areas you're weaker in (plus the online portion is free - that's $200 saved right there). Andrew was great with feedback and was also happy to answer my many questions throughout the three days. He's very knowledgeable and also has a lot of experience on the SCUBA safety side of things (ex, he works at a hyperbaric chamber) which gives you a lot of peace of mind if it's your first time diving. Each day of my training got progressively better, but here's a detailed breakdown:

Day 1: Confined water skills + "classroom" at Ala Moana Beach Park. It was a rough day, the weather wasn't on our side and the visibility in the ocean was very low. We practiced the basic skills and also spent a good chunk of time outside the ocean learning about our gear and scuba etiquette. You can't really control the conditions so we did our best to practice our skills and get ready for the next day.

Day 2: 2 40ft boat dives. This is where the fun really begins. Andrew has a "learning through experience" teaching style and being in the Open Water is where this whole experience went from great to badass. My first dive was really all about getting the basics right, and the way Andrew teaches, you really only need one dive to build muscle memory and get comfortable with being underwater. I was overweighted during this dive (thanks to the horrible ocean conditions on the beach on Day 1) so I found it hard to maintain neutral buoyancy. But it ended up being a blessing in disguise because as I oscillated between being too heavy and too light, I was able to understand how my lungs, BCD, kicks etc. affect my buoyancy. Andrew was great with his feedback after the dive, giving me very specific things to keep in mind and work on. I dropped 2lbs on my second dive and was in much better control. We also encountered some amazing wildlife across our two dives. We saw an Eagle Ray, an Octopus that inked all over us, a Moray Eel, many many turtles, and as we were about to do our final ascent, a huge Stingray swam by us within touching distance! So not only were these dives educational, the sightings really reinforced in me why I wanted to get certified in the first place!

Day 3: 2 deeper boat dives (one at 60ft). This day was all about just SCUBA diving and getting better through practice. I brought along my GoPro for this one and I am so glad I did! Our first dive was to 60ft as we moved along a sunken pipe. We spotted a school a barracudas, a big turtle and also, a snail species that Andrew hadn't seen before (we still don't know what it was but we have a picture of it so we'll keep looking). On our second dive we saw a shark! And then another turtle. This was the best day of the course and what a perfect ending. Not everyday you get to see a shark on your training course! Andrew was again great with very focused and actionable feedback. After the dives, we gave our final exam and were SCUBA certified!

The whole end-to-end experience was amazing. I should also give a shoutout to our boat captain who was so helpful with everything. HDA is a small company with employees who are very clearly passionate about diving and want to see you succeed and have a great time. They are also thorough professionals. You get to see this immediately as you give them your first call. The two times they missed my call, they called me back within 5 minutes! The communication over text/email was great as well. If you are in Hawaii looking to not just get certified but really get comfortable with your diving skills, do yourself a favor and...

I completed my Open-Water SCUBA Diving certification from Hawaiian Diving Adventures in Oahu, Hawaii with 2 other friends during Feb 24 - Feb 27 2023. I am writing about my experience to help other beginners interested in pursuing a SCUBA diving certification with the same company. I would like to preface the review by saying that my experience could have been a lot better with a different/better instructor and that in general the people at Hawaiian Diving Adventures were nice, helpful and approachable. However, there were some areas where they missed the mark completely for me.

0 visibility water on first day of confined water dive training. The instructor offered us 2 locations for the training at Magic Island- one that was very close by foot but had low visibility and one that was maybe 100 meters further but with way better visibility. Being complete beginners, we specifically asked for the higher visibility location, but the instructor still took us to the closer, low visibility location. I understood the convenience of going to the closer location, but for skill learning underwater, we obviously needed visibility more than the convenience of walking a shorter distance, and were more than willing to lug all the equipment to the second location. As expected, the water visibility at the first location was so poor that we were forced to move to the other location. This whole thing easily took 90 - 100 minutes. After moving to this newer location we were only able to do half of the planned skills. All 3 of us were willing and wanting to complete the remaining skills that same day but our instructor said that they would be able to alter our diving/certification plan to accommodate the skills on one of the remaining days. At this point of time there was no mention of scheduling an extra day of training outside of the planned days and there was certainly no discussion regarding any extra charges. On the second day after the first 2 dives, we were told we would need an additional day of training before the last 2 dives. With no written confirmation of the extra charge, after 5 days of completing the certification, I received a $300 charge on my credit card from the shop.

Besides being over charged for the full extra day which was actually only about 2-3 hrs in the water ( time that we could have saved on the first day if we had stuck with the better location from the beginning ), we found some other problems with the quality of instruction during our time with Hawaiian Diving Adventures: On the first day of training in confined waters, the instructor let my friend dive with an out of service cylinder even after my friend pointed it out (Cylinder was last serviced Jan 22). Based on SSI standards, cylinders must be serviced every year. This negligence was repeated on the second day during the first open water dive, where the instructor provided my friend with the same cylinder that had not been serviced in the last year. As per SSI standards, all divers should dive with a snorkel. Our instructor told us to leave our snorkels out during training on the first day, which is not only against the rules, but also dangerous for beginner divers. Some negligence while teaching technique. One of my friends was incorrectly placing the regulator in her mouth ( not biting it properly, thus allowing water to enter the mouth while diving ). Despite complaining about water entering her mouth, the instructor did not tell her the proper technique to hold the regulator. It was on day 2 during the first open water dive that a different instructor noticed her incorrect technique and pointed out...

I recently did my open water certification with Hawaiian Diving Adventures with my friends. There were some good aspects to the training. But there were a few critical things that transpired that have scarred my experience.

Prior to booking our open dive session the diving company mentioned that you can take as much time in your planned sessions to get comfortable with the water. We even mentioned that 2 of the 3 in our group are complete beginners and would need time. They reiterated that we should not worry about it and they’ll be able to handle it in the planned sessions. Little did we know that the company would add an extra day of training in our course and charge us for that without discussing this with us. When we tried to talk about it the diving company mentioned that we took 8 and 5 hours in our confined water sessions. This claim was completely false as we have proof that our sessions were only 5.25 hours and 3 hours each. And out of that 5.25 hours the first day we spent atleast 2 hours if not more going to a site with poor visibility (even though we clearly expressed prior to the start of the session that we should target a region with high under water visibility since we were new) and lugged across our heavy scuba diving kit and cylinder a few hundred meters and back. We could have easily done all the remaining skills in the remaining time on day one but the instructor mentioned that “he had places to be”. This caused us to get an extra day. Charging us for that extra day and that too without our consent is just not done! Negligence in training: During our first confined open water session our instructor mentioned that we should ideally use snorkels whenever we dive but we can leave it out while training. So we were literally instructed to keep our snorkels in our bag as we go for our diving training. This was in complete contradiction to what we had learnt in our SSI e-learning. Unserviced equipment: I was given a cylinder that was not serviced for more than an year. I brought it up with the instructor and he mentioned “Oh shoot! This should have been serviced. Don’t worry I’ll get it serviced before our dive tomorrow.” Guess what? I got the same unserviced cylinder on both my dives! Deceitful business practices: When we were disputing the extra payments that the diving company had charged us. They brought up points like “you got a private charter during your last dives” and the “owner deciding to dive alongside to provide help” as if they did us any favors. I fail to understand how these are favors in any manner. You can’t say we got a private charter because you could not find other clients to dive with you. We did not request a private charter! The owner deciding to jump is part of the training and should have been factored in when you accepted our bookings for 3 people. These things are not any favors, so should not have been mentioned.

The diving team here is good but their unethical business practices pinched me a little and hence I would think twice before recommending this place to...