There are a thousand guides to learning to scuba dive, and most of them could have been written anywhere. This one is about learning here: on Gili Air, in our water, on the reefs we dive every single day. What follows is what we actually tell people who walk into the centre and ask what they are getting into — including the parts that are less fun to read than the turtles.
What the water is actually like
Warm, and warm all year. Sea temperature sits between 27 and 30 °C, warmest around May to August and only about a degree or two cooler between December and March. A 3 mm shorty or a full 3 mm suit is all anyone needs; nobody here dives in a 7 mm. Deeper sites can drop to around 24 °C, but as a beginner you will not be going anywhere near that: your training dives stay in the shallow, calm end of the map.
Visibility swings with the season. In the dry months, roughly May to October, it runs about 25–35 m. In the wet season, November to March, plankton pulls it back to something like 10–25 m — still perfectly good diving, just less blue. April to October brings the calmest seas; September–October and May–June are the sweet spots, and July–August are the busiest weeks of the year on the island.
The sites are close. Boat rides run 5 to 15 minutes, which is short enough that seasickness is rarely the problem people expect it to be. Most of our diving is gentle drift diving — we let the current carry us along the reef and the boat follows the bubbles. A few sites have real current and are kept for experienced divers; the reefs we teach on are not those sites.
Your first day: the pool comes first, always
Every Try Scuba day starts in the pool at the dive centre, never in the ocean. It opens with a briefing — how the equipment works, how to breathe on a regulator, how to equalise your ears, the handful of hand signals you will use. Then you get in the shallow water and practise the actual skills: breathing underwater, clearing your mask, recovering a regulator, and finding your buoyancy. There is no exam and no clock. The whole taster runs around three hours.
Only when that feels normal do you go diving: one guided reef dive to a maximum of 12 metres, with your instructor beside you the entire time, in a group of no more than four divers per instructor. We run Try Scuba in three shapes — two morning dives with the pool session the afternoon before (or at 7AM the same day), a single morning dive, or a later start with the pool at 10AM and one dive at 2:30PM. Tell us your island schedule and we fit the diving around it.
If you want the certification, not just the taster
The SSI Open Water Diver course is the real thing: three days at a relaxed pace (two on request), and at the end you can plan and make dives to 18 metres with a buddy, anywhere in the world, for life. It runs in three phases — theory on the SSI app (the first chapters are free, so you can start before you even land), a full pool day, then four ocean dives on gentle reefs, finishing with the final skills and the exam.
If you started with Try Scuba and got hooked, your pool time and your first dive are credited toward the course. You only ever pay the Open Water price — no double charge, no starting over.
The prerequisites nobody tells you until you arrive
- Age. Open Water starts at 10. Divers aged 10 to 14 certify as Junior Open Water with depth limits. Younger children have their own pool-based programmes with a private instructor, from 8 years old.
- Swimming. You do not need to be an athlete, but for the Open Water course the standard is a 200 m swim (or 300 m with mask, snorkel and fins) plus 10 minutes floating or treading water. No time limit, no style marks.
- Comfort in water matters more than technique. For Try Scuba, basic water confidence is enough.
- Health. Everyone completes a medical questionnaire before getting in the water — see below.
- Group size. Four students per instructor, maximum. That is a standard, not a marketing line.
- Been away from diving for over a year? A refresher — a pool session plus an easy first dive — before you join the fun dives.
The medical questionnaire is not a formality
Every entry-level student fills in the SSI Diver Medical Statement and Questionnaire before entering the water. It asks about your heart and lungs, your ears and sinuses, neurological conditions, diabetes and epilepsy, among others. If any answer is yes, you need a physician's approval to dive before you get in — not after. Divers under 18 have the form signed by a parent or guardian. Scuba diving is not advised during pregnancy, so we do not take pregnant guests diving; snorkelling is a lovely alternative.
The practical advice: read the questionnaire before you travel. There are doctors on the Gilis who can sign off, but sorting a certificate at home is far less stressful than sorting one on a small island on the morning your course was supposed to start. A doctor's certificate confirming fitness to dive, signed within the last 12 months, also works.
What's included, and what you pay on top
Included in every course and guided dive with us:
- All equipment — brand-new ScubaPro gear in a full range of sizes: mask, fins, wetsuit, BCD, regulator, weights and tank.
- Your SSI instructor or divemaster guide.
- Pool sessions and guided ocean dives.
- For courses: SSI digital learning materials, digital logbook, certification and insurance for the duration of the course.
- Free underwater videos of your dives.
- Drinking water, tea and coffee on the boat.
Paid separately, so you are never surprised at the end:
- Gili Matra Marine Park fee — IDR 100,000. One-off, valid around 30 days, paid to the park and not to us. Cash.
- Optional Gili Eco Trust donation — IDR 50,000, which funds local reef restoration and clean-ups.
- Nitrox or a 15 L tank, dive computer, torch or GoPro rental.
- Accommodation, meals, travel and dive insurance, and tips.
For reference: Try Scuba is IDR 800,000 pool-only, IDR 1,400,000 with one reef dive and IDR 2,200,000 with two morning dives. The Open Water course is IDR 6,900,000. Once you are certified, a single fun dive is IDR 650,000, with discounts from three dives onward.
The honest safety picture
Two things a beginner deserves to hear plainly. First: there is no hyperbaric chamber on the Gili Islands. The nearest chambers are in Mataram on Lombok, and then Bali. In the rare event of a problem, first response is 100 % oxygen and an evacuation call — DAN runs a 24/7 emergency hotline — and the route off the island is short and well practised. But the chamber is not here, and anyone who implies otherwise is selling you something.
Second, and directly because of the first: get dive insurance. Ordinary travel policies frequently exclude scuba diving, and hyperbaric treatment plus evacuation is not a small bill. A dedicated dive policy such as DAN covers exactly that. It costs very little compared with the trip you are already paying for.
The third thing is about flying home. Wait at least 18 hours after diving before you fly — 12 hours after a single no-decompression dive — and allow a full 24 hours before a flight to be safe. The same applies to the Mount Rinjani trek on Lombok, because it climbs to altitude: 24 hours between your last dive and the trailhead. Plan your last dive day backwards from your flight, not forwards from your arrival.
What you will realistically see
Green and hawksbill turtles, on nearly every dive. That is not a slogan here — our house reef is called Turtle Point, it starts at 3 metres just off the beach in front of the centre, and it is where most first dives happen. Add clownfish in their anemones, blue-spotted stingrays, schools of snapper, octopus, cuttlefish and morays, and a beginner's dive here is a busy one.
What we will not promise: mantas, whale sharks or any of the big pelagic headline acts. They pass through, mostly in the plankton-rich wet season, and they are chance encounters — not residents and not a schedule. If you want the full picture of who actually lives on these reefs, we wrote that up in Meet Gili Air's Gentle Locals.
What to bring, and what to leave behind
- Swimwear, a towel, and reef-safe sunscreen — or better, a rash guard, which does the same job and does not wash onto the coral.
- A refillable water bottle (there is drinking water on the boat) and a dry bag if you have one.
- Certified divers: your certification card and logbook.
- Leave jewellery at your accommodation.
- Arrive about 30 minutes before your trip for the briefing and gear fitting.
That's the whole picture, minus the part we can't write down: what it feels like the first time you exhale and sink instead of float. If you want to find out, message us on WhatsApp with your dates and your level, and we'll put you on the right reef on the right day. Start with Try Scuba if you are curious, or the Open Water course if you already know you're going to want more than one dive.