Scuba Diving is an exciting and rewarding adventure activity, but can also be physically demanding. There are several factors to consider before going diving to ensure your safety at all times. This page covers the health and medical requirements for scuba diving.
Before participating in any scuba diving activity, you must complete a dive medical which will indicate whether a further medical assessment is required prior to diving. We have provided the relevant self assessment questionnaires and physician forms for each below:
Please complete the Intro Diver Self Assessment Medical Questionnaire to find out whether you need a further medical evaluation before diving. Failure to do so may result in you not being allowed to participate in your SCUBA dive.
If a medical evaluation is required, please print and take the Diver Medical Examiner’s Evaluation Form with you to your physician.
Please review the Diver Medical Examiner’s Evaluation Form and if you answer yes to any of the health questions, you will need to bring the completed form with you to your physician to receive a physician’s letter/medical clearance before you start your course.
Everyone undertaking training for an entry level recreational diving certificate must be at least 10 years of age. If the diver is under 18, parental or guardian consent should be obtained for the diver to undertake training for an entry-level recreational diving certificate.
If the diver is under 12, we must be informed before the course starts, as a private instructor will be needed.
Please complete the Certified Diver Self Assessment Medical Questionnaire to find out whether you need a further medical evaluation before diving. Failure to do so may result in you not being allowed to participate in your SCUBA dive.
If a medical evaluation is required, please print and take the Diver Medical Examiner’s Evaluation Form with you to your physician.
Please complete the Bubblemaker Self Assessment Medical Questionnaire to find out whether your child needs a further medical evaluation before diving. Failure to do so may result in your child not being able to participate in the Scuba Kids dive.
If a medical evaluation is required, please print and take the Diver Medical Examiner’s Evaluation Form with you to your child’s physician.
A medical evaluation is required for continuing SCUBA education, please print and take the Diver Medical Examiner’s Evaluation Form with you to your physician. Failure to do so may result in you not being allowed to participate in your SCUBA dive.
You’ll need a valid diving medical to Australian Standards AS4005.1 (or Australian Standards 2299 if you plan to work in Australia) to attend any professional dive courses. These medicals are valid for 12 months.
If you want to find a doctor with dive medical experience in Cairns, Australia or around the world, you can search this dive doctors list.
Filling out the medical questionnaire accurately and honestly is crucial. It is not uncommon for people to underestimate the significance of a medical condition or be unaware of its effects on diving ability. Failing to disclose a medical condition or providing inaccurate information can result in serious injury or even death while diving. Therefore, completing the medical questionnaire thoroughly is a critical step towards ensuring the safety of the diver and the people diving with them.
If during the activity it becomes apparent that the medical questionnaire has been incorrectly completed, either by omission or false statement, we reserve the right to prevent any customer from undertaking any scuba diving or snorkelling activities. Any decision made in this regard will be at the absolute discretion of the Dive Supervisor aboard the vessel.
All information sheets and forms linked below are in Adobe Acrobat PDF file format. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can download it for free from Adobe.
You can also check our Frequently Asked Questions page for more snorkel and dive info, or find out more about what’s involved in learning to scuba dive.
We strongly recommend travel insurance to cover you if your trip is cancelled due to illness, poor weather, travel delays, cancellation or alteration of the scheduled itinerary, lost luggage or legal costs. Travel insurance may not cover diving accidents and treatment/evacuation. For that we recommend separate insurance like that offered by Dive Assure. They offer comprehensive insurance packages specifically for scuba divers.
Dive Assure also offers a rider which includes coverage specific to overnight experiences, including flight cancellations or delays resulting in missed departures, vessel mechanical failures, medical inability to dive, inclement weather (in addition to named storms/cyclones) and other incidents. A severe storm or named cyclone in the region may delay our departure or require the trip to be cut short or cancelled. If travelling in the cyclone season (December to April) we advise the purchase of (well prior the due Travel Date), insurance that covers force majeure events (being events outside the control of the parties, such as natural disasters).
Scuba diving and in-water activities are not covered by all travel insurance policies, and policy wordings should be read carefully. It is important to note that in the event a customer requires medical emergency services; the evacuation, medical, and vessel relocation expenses are at the financial responsibility of the customer. Please note that current liability insurance and current personal dive injury/evacuation insurance are prerequisites for the PADI Scuba Diving Instructor Training Program.
Regulations state that for a single, no decompression dive, you should not fly or go to altitude for at least 12 hours. For multiple dives you should not fly or go to altitude for at least 18 hours.
It is required by Queensland law that you must wait at least 24 hours after diving before going to altitude or flying – there is no guarantee that following these recommendations will prevent decompression sickness. Currently there are no guidelines regarding diving after flying.
Altitude is defined as 300m/1000ft above sea level. Certain other tourist attractions around Cairns and Tropical North Queensland involve travelling to altitude. These include the Atherton Tablelands and the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, so we recommend a gap between booking these experiences and any dive course or trip.
Our overnight experience diving usually finishes by midday and our day trips by 2pm, which makes it easier to plan some down time between diving and flying/going to altitude.
