What each course actually involves, how long it really takes, and the handful of things that decide whether it goes well — most of which are settled before you leave home.
An instructor-supervised first breath underwater, usually a short theory briefing, some practice in shallow water and then one dive holding onto or beside the instructor. It is an experience, not a qualification, and it expires the moment you get out.
Suits: Anyone unsure whether they will like it, or actively nervous. It is the correct first step and there is no shame in stopping there — plenty of people discover they would rather snorkel, which is a perfectly good outcome for one morning.
If you already know you want to dive properly, this is money spent twice. Go straight to the Open Water course, which starts in the same shallow water anyway.
The entry-level licence, recognised worldwide and for life. Theory (increasingly done online before you fly, which buys you a day of holiday), several confined-water sessions building skills in shallow water, and four open-water dives.
Suits: Anyone who wants to dive more than once in their life. The Red Sea is among the best places on earth to do it — warm water, high visibility, shore-accessible reef, and enough competition between centres that standards at the good end are high.
The single most common mistake is booking it for the last three days of the holiday. You cannot fly for at least eighteen hours after diving, and a course that slips a day by weather then collides with your flight.
Five guided dives, each introducing a skill: navigation and a deep dive are compulsory, and the other three are chosen from a list that here usually means wreck, drift and night.
Suits: Anyone who wants the wrecks. Most of the famous ones sit deeper than eighteen metres, and the good parts of Thistlegorm are below an Open Water limit — this is the course that turns a dive-site list into an itinerary.
It is not really "advanced" in any meaningful sense; it is a guided introduction to five things. The name oversells it and the diving underneath it is genuinely worth doing.
A short pool or shallow-water session redoing mask clearing, regulator recovery and buoyancy with an instructor watching, before you go out on a boat.
Suits: Anyone whose last dive was more than a year ago, and honestly anyone who feels rusty regardless of the date. A centre that does not offer or suggest one after a long gap is telling you something about how it operates.
This is the cheapest safety purchase available on this coast, and the one people skip because admitting rustiness feels embarrassing. Nobody at a dive centre thinks less of you; they think a great deal less of the diver who did not mention it.
A short course, mostly theory, to dive on air with a higher oxygen content. It does not let you go deeper — it extends how long you can stay at the depths you already dive.
Suits: Anyone doing several dives a day for a week, which is most people here, and anyone on a liveaboard. The benefit is real and largely felt as being less wrecked by day four.
You cannot fly for at least eighteen hours after diving, and twenty-four is the safer habit after several days of it. A course booked for the last three days has no slack in it: one windy day, one ear that will not clear, and you are choosing between finishing and catching your flight. Front-load it and the rest of the week is diving you actually enjoy.
Every centre will give you a standard medical questionnaire. Answering yes to anything — asthma, heart conditions, ear or sinus surgery, diabetes, epilepsy, some medications, pregnancy — means a doctor signs you off before you dive, not that you cannot dive. The mistake is ticking no to avoid the hassle, which puts you underwater with a condition nobody around you knows about and voids your insurance. Sort it with your own doctor before you fly; it is a fifteen-minute appointment at home and a lost day here.
Far more courses are interrupted by a cold than by nerves. If you cannot equalise, you cannot descend, and pushing it is how people damage an eardrum on day one. Do not dive with a head cold, do not rely on decongestants to get you down — they wear off at depth — and tell the instructor early rather than at six metres.
Bring your own mask if you own one that fits; a leaking rental mask ruins more dives than anything else on the list. Everything else is provided and the rest is not worth the luggage on a first course. If you get into it, the order to buy in is mask, then computer, then the rest — and a computer is the one that changes how you dive.
No touching, no standing, no gloves on many boats, no collecting anything, and no feeding fish — this last one is not just etiquette, it is one of the factors repeatedly identified in shark incidents on this coast. Marine park fees fund the mooring buoys that stop anchors destroying the reef. Reef-safe sunscreen, or better, a rash vest instead.
Training standards, medical requirements and marine park rules change, and every dive centre interprets them slightly differently. Treat this as what to ask about rather than as the rules themselves — your instructor and the centre’s current paperwork are the authority, and anything medical is a doctor’s call, not ours.