About Professional Diving Academy

What Sets Us Apart

Established in 2004, the Professional Diving Academy has been delivering world-class commercial diver training for over two decades. As one of the most modern diver training schools in the world, we are proud to offer a unique and direct connection to the diving industry through our ADC-accredited sister company, Shearwater Marine Services—one of the UK’s largest marine civil engineering diving contractors.

This vital industry link enables us to provide an unrivalled, industry-relevant training experience. Our delegates benefit from learning essential commercial diving skills in a realistic, hands-on environment that closely reflects the demands of working in the field. With a strong focus on safety, professionalism and practical competence, we prepare our students to meet the challenges of a global subsea career from day one.

HSE Approved

Originally established to protect commercial divers operating in the challenging conditions of the United Kingdom’s offshore oil and gas fields, the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Diving Division quickly earned an outstanding reputation for setting industry-leading safety standards.

Building on this legacy, the HSE-accredited Commercial Diving Courses offered by The Professional Diving Academy are recognised among the best in the world, delivering exceptional training that prioritises safety and excellence.

‍Dive Sites

The life of a commercial diver is anything but routine, often requiring adaptability to a wide range of jobs and locations. While we can’t promise constant sunshine and warmth, we can promise that your time with us will expose you to a diverse array of dive sites, work tasks and deployment methods. Why is this important? Great question!

Our courses are intentionally designed to prepare students for the varied and dynamic demands of a career in commercial diving. To achieve this, we utilise barges, workboats, support craft and a fully equipped portable dive trailer that replicates a standard inshore civil engineering diving project—providing a truly authentic training experience.

We are committed to running our courses in real-world conditions. Curious about what this looks like? Take a read over the diverse dive sites you'll explore during your training:

Lazaretto Point

Situated less than five minutes away from Unit 19, Lazaretto Point is the ideal location for your first open water dives with us. “Laz” as its affectionately known by students and staff, is a scenic, sheltered headland on the south shore of the Holy Loch with panoramic views of outstanding natural beauty. Lazaretto Point is landmarked by its war memorial tower, a prominent 35ft circular stone memorial, unveiled on 14 May 1922, commemorating local residents who died in WWI and WWII.

To our visiting students it provides the ideal training environment to master the fundamental skills of commercial diving including mobilisation/demobilisation to a dive site, kit handling, environmental conditions (weather, sandy conditions etc), dressing in/out procedures as a Diver/Tender. As a dive site it also provides a gentle gradient for your beach access and egress of the water and an ideal spot for practising buoyancy control, lifeline signals, lifeline management, surface marker buoys, even down to getting those fins on and off your feet.

Jubilee Point

Jubilee Point is another charming and photogenic location, situated roughly halfway along Loch Eck and is part of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park. Red squirrels, Dive Tenders and Instructors on the surface, with Loch Eck's rare Powan Fish—a relic of the Ice Age— Trout, Salmon, Char and baby Divers below the surface.

Fresh water, an alternative sea-bed type, limited visibility and hard-wired comms are added to your growing core skills set. A slightly more challenging mobilisation/demobilisation site and the Scottish midge, all contribute to an ideal training site for your future employment as a Commercial Diver, potentially working for local water authorities or on flood defences, inspections, surveys and sea-bed searches.

Dunoon Timber Pier

Constructed with robust Greenheart timber piles in the mid-19^th century to serve the paddle steamers from Glasgow, it is recognised as the best surviving example of a timber ferry pier in Scotland. As a Diver training site, the pier gives us another central location with a flat sandy, predictable seabed in a depth range between 5-9meters, ideal for mastering self-rescue procedures, buoyancy control and under water pilotage. Access and egress are now via ladder.

On successful completion of the SCUBA elements, you will return to the pier for training on tools including an introduction to mixed metal arcwelding, subsea rigging and fleeting with a lift bag, the use of hydraulic power tools subsea and dredging with a pneumatic airlift. Topside, over the course you will be focusing on your duties as a tender, dressing your diver in and out of the water correctly and consistently, tending and coiling umbilical’s, operating a dive panel in dive control and communicating effectively with divers in the water whilst relaying relevant information to the surface team.

DSB Sleat

Built in 1961 in the Netherlands as a river ferry and after a stint ferrying cars and passengers until early 2000s with Western Ferries, the vessel was retired from the Dunoon to Gourock crossing and became our flagship diver training vessel.

Boasting a length of 40m and a beam of 15m, she is now a permanently moored diver training vessel on Holy Loch, equipped with D023 dive system, wet bell and air‑cage launch/recovery systems, breathing air panels, hot‑water suit supply, hydraulic power packs, water desalinisation plant, as well as an on-board decompression chamber for surface decompression training. Below deck is a spacious classroom and welfare facilities.

Below the waterline is a typical Roll On/ Roll Off hull with a decommissioned Voith Schneider propellor at bow and stern to get familiar with. Mid water pre-inspection cleaning with a hydraulic prop polisher, detailed hull inspections using a Cygnus ultra sonic thickness gauge and monitoring its cathodic protection system using a bathycorrometer all provide the opportunity to train for real world boat husbandry.

She may be in her twilight years but there is plenty of life in the old girl yet!

Industry Ready

At PDA, our training courses consistently raise the bar for commercial diver education. Backed by a rich heritage and a proven track record in the diving industry, we’ve built a reputation for excellence that spans decades. We were proud to be the first HSE-accredited commercial diver training school to introduce advanced skills courses; including the Kirby Morgan Maintenance and Repair Technician certification and the Diving Project Awareness Workshop.

Our mission is to ensure every PDA graduate enters the industry with the skills, motivation and employability needed to thrive. We emphasise hands-on experience, providing training in realistic, controlled environments that reflect actual working conditions.

With deep industry roots and forward-thinking training, we’re committed to making each student’s journey both memorable and meaningful—an experience where lifelong skills and lasting friendships are forged.

Unit 19, Dunoon

Our impressive facilities provide the perfect environment for students to master the skills needed for a successful career in commercial diving. Inside our modern and spacious training centre, you’ll find a decompression chamber, dedicated diving tank, a drying room, ample locker and changing areas designed for comfort and convenience . Our classrooms are thoughtfully designed to focus on learning, offering an ideal setting to absorb essential knowledge and sit those exams. When it’s time to refuel or unwind, students can relax in the canteen, a space reserved exclusively for them.