Scuba Diving is it an expensive hobby?

Being able to experience the diversity of the underwater world is amazing, you can dive the same site 10 times and always find or see something different. When I’m talking to people telling them about my underwater adventures they often ask me is scuba diving expensive? I think it’s how you look at It and what you want to gain. The PADI open water certification is about £445 and this enables you to dive anywhere in the world. Where you wish to take your level of diving is up to you.

It’s like any hobby/sport that you want to get into, there is always an initial cost for equipment and training courses etc. the biggest cost especially for UK diving is a drysuit, BCD and Regulators. When buying a drysuit you want to be able to try one on, get advice on fit, pros and cons of different types of drysuit.

Regulators, there are lots of deals about on the internet but when you look further into it a cheap deal can become expensive when you start to look at servicing costs etc. My advice here would to be buy local from a dealer as you can get first hand advice on servicing and which would suit your needs best. I also tend to say that birthdays and Christmas is a great way of getting dive kit together, expanding or upgrading from existing kit but when thought about and planned it becomes relatively easy.

We could look at mountain biking or golf again the initial cost of a decent bike can be expensive, but once you have laidout the initial cost the rest becomes easier. Once you have made the investment in equipment going out being active with our hobby is easier on the pocket.

Going out diving for the day around any of our wonderful coastline won’t cost anything to get wet. The only cost would be for fuel and the odd cylinder fills (at around £5 a fill). Just like with any sport of hobby you would still have a running cost.

Once we have built our collection of dive kit then there is the annual servicing of the equipment that requires to be done. Servicing generally varies depending on the manufacturers cost of service kits (the labour costs remain the same regardless of manufacturer) so a little homework can save high ongoing costs

So overall when looking at the cost of the sport/hobby it may seem daunting with the cost of equipment but when you look around all hobbies/sports will have an expense – some less than others. Never let cost of equipment hold you back most dive centres will have equipment that you can rent, (for around £35 for a day) so you can still get out diving whilst building up your collection of dive kit whilst enjoying the underwater world.

Like most hobbies you can spend a fortunate in a single hit or you can build kit slowly and hire the rest. Diving is no exception but it doesnt havent to cost the earth once you are certified.