About the Course

Be the scuba diver everyone wants to follow because you know where you are and where you're going. The PADI Underwater Navigator course fine-tunes your observation skills and teaches you to more accurately use your compass underwater. If you like challenges with big rewards, take this course and have fun finding your way.

If you're a PADI (Junior) Open Water Diver who is at least 10 years old, you can enroll in the PADI Underwater Navigator Specialty course.

Take This Course If You Want to
  • Improve your navigation skills
  • Find the boat without surfacing
  • Learn natural navigation clues
Learn How to
  • Use a diving compass
  • Navigate making multiple turns
  • Estimate distance underwater

Learn How to Navigate Underwater

It’s easy to get disoriented underwater if you don’t know how to use a compass or natural navigation clues. Learn how to easily find your way back to boat or shore without returning to the surface and avoid long, exhausting swims.

The PADI Difference

For over 50 years, PADI has undeniably been the Way the World Learns to Dive®, setting the standard for the highest quality dive training, underwater safety and conservation initiatives while evolving the sport of diving into a passionate lifestyle.

30,000,000+

(and counting) PADI certified divers to date!

6,600

PADI dive centers and resorts across the globe

128,000

PADI Professional members worldwide

More Info

 
Gifting and Sharing Courses

Want to share the experience or give the gift of endless adventure? You can now purchase PADI eLearning® and share it with a recipient of your choice! Whether you are purchasing the course as a gift or need to assign it to family members – it’s super easy.

  1. Purchase an eLearning course.
  2. Follow the link in your confirmation email or sign into your account to go to your Dashboard.
  3. From your Dashboard go to 'Manage Your Courses' section.
  4. Select the course you'd like to gift and enter the email of the gift recipient.
  5. The recipient will receive an email to start the eLearning course.
 
Medical Requirements

Scuba diving requires a minimum level of health and fitness. Chronic health conditions, certain medications and/or recent surgery may require you to get written approval from a physician before diving.

Avoid disappointment, download and review the Diver Medical form to ensure you won’t need a physician’s approval to dive before enrolling in a scuba course. Instructors, divemasters and dive shop staff are not physicians and should not be asked for medical advice; only medical professionals can give medical clearance to dive.

If you (or your physician) have questions about medical fitness to dive, contact the experts at Divers Alert Network (DAN).

 
Prerequisites & Minimum Age

Minimum Age: 10

Course prerequisites: (Jr.) Open Water Diver or equivalent entry-level certification

 
Choosing a Dive Shop

Choosing a Dive Shop
You can complete this course locally or while travelling. 

Choose a dive shop close to home to:

  • Support your local diving community
  • Meet dive buddies in your local area
  • Learn about your local ecosystem

Choose a dive shop away from home if you:

  • Plan to travel to a dive destination on holiday
  • Like to meet new people when travelling
  • Have the time to complete your course while on vacation
 
Other Costs & Equipment

This course requires both knowledge development and inwater training for certification. When you purchase PADI eLearning from our website, the cost covers the knowledge development portion only.

There is an additional cost to complete your certification with a PADI Instructor. The cost depends on class size, environment, and whether or not you need to rent equipment. Contact a PADI Dive Center or Resort for more information and pricing. 

In addition to basic scuba gear, you will need a compass and underwater slate. Your PADI Instructor or local dive center staff may suggest other gear to help you stay oriented, such as marker buoys or lines and reels.

Consider investing in your own scuba equipment so you can learn with it during the course and become familiar with how it works.

 
Time Commitment

PADI eLearning: 2-4 hours

Entire course: 2-3 days

 
Available Languages
English, Espanol, Français, Nederlands, 日本語
 
System Requirements

PADI’s online courses are designed to work on the browsers listed below. For the best experience, make sure your browser is up-to-date.

Chrome
Safari
Edge
Firefox

If you plan to be somewhere without internet access, use the PADI Training app to download course content and study offline. Content can be downloaded in small sections with a total file size of approximately 188 MB. When you get back online, upload your progress so you can resume your training right where you left off. 

The PADI Training app is available for Android™ and Apple® iOS devices. For the ideal experience, devices should be no more than three models old and running with the most current OS (operating system).

 
After this course

The first dive of the PADI Underwater Navigator Specialty course may count toward your Advanced Open Water Diver certification – ask your instructor about earning credit.


Every PADI Specialty you earn gets you one step closer to becoming a PADI Master Scuba Diver™. Only 2 percent of divers ever achieve this elite rating.

More Courses

Continuing-Education
Peak Performance Buoyancy
Find the perfect balance: Dive with less weight, and improve your buoyancy control and air consumption.
Continuing-Education
Deep Diver
Reach new depths, discover new dive sites, and learn about deep dive planning, dive limits and gas management.
Continuing-Education
Night Diver
See the underwater world after sundown and learn how to navigate, ascend and descend, and use your dive light to communicate at night.