Digital learning
Free SSI Open Water digital kit and a digital logbook, yours to keep and revise from at any time.
SSI Open Water Diver
Open Water Diver
Your first real certification: plan and make dives to 18m, anywhere in the world, for life.
SSI Open Water Diver
Your first real certification: plan and make dives to 18m, anywhere in the world, for life.
The foundation
Open Water teaches you to plan and make dives to 18m with a buddy, without a professional beside you. It is the licence the whole diving world is built on.
The SSI Open Water Diver course blends short digital lessons, a confined water session and four open water dives. You learn how your body and your gear behave underwater, then prove every skill in calm water before the sea.
All prices in IDR · Marine Park fee of IDR 100,000 not included.
What is the Open Water course?
The SSI Open Water Diver course blends short digital lessons, a confined water session and four open water dives. You learn how your body and your gear behave underwater, then prove every skill in calm water before the sea.
By the end you can assemble your equipment, manage your air and buoyancy, deal with a flooded mask or a lost regulator, and plan a dive with a buddy. Nothing is rushed, and nothing is left to chance.
Three days at a relaxed pace, or two on request. Here is how they actually run.
The first chapters of the SSI Open Water course are free to start before you travel, and the rest unlocks when your course is booked. It covers pressure, equalisation, buoyancy, your equipment, dive planning and the environment. Finishing it at home is the single thing that makes the course feel unhurried once you are here.
About five hours. We close out the theory together, then spend the day in confined water learning every core skill: mask clearing and removal, regulator recovery, sharing air, controlled ascents and buoyancy. This is also the day you do the watermanship, a 200 m swim, or 300 m with mask, snorkel and fins, plus a 10 minute float or tread. It is not timed and it is not a race.
Roughly five and a half hours, including the boat. Your first two open water dives stay shallow, around 12 m, on calm reefs a 5 to 15 minute ride from the centre. You repeat the pool skills where the water has a current and a bottom you cannot stand on, then swim the reef with your instructor.
Your last two training dives take you to a maximum of 18 m, you finish the remaining skills, and you sit the final exam, which is a straightforward multiple choice review of what you have already learned. Your SSI Open Water Diver certification and digital logbook then go into the SSI app: 18 m, worldwide, with a buddy, for life.
Message us on WhatsApp and we will find the right days for your Open Water course.
Everything you need is included, so you can focus on the diving.
Free SSI Open Water digital kit and a digital logbook, yours to keep and revise from at any time.
A qualified SSI instructor with you from the pool to your final dive.
Full rental gear for the whole course, one pool session and four open water training dives, four students per instructor at most.
Dive insurance for the course, your certification fee and your worldwide SSI card on completion.
Course requirements
Open Water is designed for complete beginners. To join you only need to:
Why Gili Air
Gili Air sits in warm, sheltered water off Lombok. Sea temperatures stay around 28 to 30 degrees all year, visibility is generous and the reefs closest to shore are calm and shallow, ideal for your first dives.
You will very likely share your training dives with green turtles, and finish your course over some of the friendliest reefs in the archipelago.
Four students per instructor at most, so you are never a number in a crowd.
Instructors who grew up diving these reefs and know every site by heart.
Study online at your own pace, then spend your water time actually diving, not sat in a classroom.
Clear prices and quality rental gear, with no hidden extras beyond the Marine Park fee.
No. Open Water is the entry level course and starts from zero, with a pool session before any ocean dive.
You need to be comfortable in water and able to swim a short distance and float. That is all.
Open Water training dives go to a maximum of 18m, and your certification then lets you dive to 18m worldwide.
Three days at a relaxed pace, and it can be done in two days on request. Finishing the digital learning before you arrive helps us move faster.
Yes. SSI is a globally recognised agency and your card is valid for life, at any dive centre in the world.
Start with Try Scuba or the Scuba Diver course. Both credit toward Open Water if you decide to continue.
A 200 m swim, or 300 m with mask, snorkel and fins, plus 10 minutes floating or treading water. Neither is timed and there is no style requirement. It is there to show you can look after yourself at the surface if you ever have to, not to grade your front crawl.
You complete the SSI Diver Medical Statement and questionnaire before your first session, or bring a doctor's certificate signed within the last 12 months confirming you are fit to dive. The questionnaire asks about your heart, lungs, ears and sinuses, neurological conditions, diabetes, epilepsy and pregnancy. Any yes answer needs a physician's approval to dive before you get in the water, so send it to us early rather than on the morning. Divers under 18 have the form countersigned by a parent or guardian.
Four students per instructor at most, and often fewer. It is the ratio we teach to on every course, because it is the difference between an instructor who can watch you and one who cannot.
No, and it is worth planning for. Allow at least 18 hours between your last dive and a flight, and a full 24 hours before either a flight or the Mount Rinjani trek, which climbs to altitude just as a plane does. Give us your travel dates when you book and we will place your four dives so the last one leaves you a clear margin.
Your course covers the SSI instructor, the free digital learning kit, all your equipment for the duration, the pool session, four open water dives, your certification fee and a digital logbook. Paid separately: the Gili Matra Marine Park fee of IDR 100,000, a one-off valid around 30 days that is collected in cash and goes to the park rather than to us, the optional IDR 50,000 reef donation to the Gili Eco Trust, and personal costs such as accommodation, meals, travel insurance and tips. Optional extras like nitrox, a dive computer or a camera are charged on top.
No. There is no hyperbaric chamber on the Gilis. The nearest is in Mataram on Lombok, with others in Bali, reached by speedboat and then road on a route the island's dive centres know well. Decompression illness is rare in recreational diving, and the training you do on this course is most of the reason why, but it is exactly why we ask every diver to carry insurance that covers scuba, chamber treatment and evacuation. DAN is the usual choice; ordinary travel insurance often excludes diving, so read the wording before you travel.