All of our bookings are arranged in advance online. Availability for Irish dates is shown under each course. If you want to first confirm that your dates are available for any of our Egypt offerings, send us a message. We can only guarantee availability on the day we respond to your query, if you wait days or weeks before confirming your booking with us, that place might unfortunately be gone. Your booking is only confirmed in our system when payment is made. Typically the full balance is taken on booking. We can also take deposits for courses, and have them paid off over time, however they must be paid up in full at latest 1 month in advance of your start date. If the course or coaching package you want to book is not listed, send us a message. Booking can either be completed through our automated online system or we can issue you an invoice directly.

Short answer is no. But we also don't typically 'fail' students. Though we are both AIDA Instructors and can certify up to the AIDA 4 Assistant Instructor level, AIDA course levels are skills-based rather than simply participation-based. We are very clear upfront that our courses are to teach you skills and not to give you a certification. None of our courses guarantee an AIDA certification as performance requirements need to be met in order to obtain a given certification level, and this depends on how quickly each person learns and demonstrates the various skills that are taught. That being said, it is not unreasonable for someone to pass all of the AIDA requirements over a 2 or 3 day course in Ireland or during our week long courses and coaching packages in Egypt. However in many cases, further training sessions are typically required to complete all AIDA standard requirements for your level. Extra sessions will be at the expense of the student, and this cost varies depending on location. Once requirements for the course level you have signed up for are met, we will of course issue the appropriate certificate. Even if you do not "pass" all the specific requirements for your level of desired certification, under the AIDA system, we can log the skills you have completed, and continue to tick off course requirements for 12 months. On all of our courses, our main focus is to support you at the level you are at, and we try to not hyper-focus on passing requirements. This is because each student/freediver has different needs and abilities, and we find that you will be more successful by taking the pressure and stress away from just wanting to "pass requirements." In fact, we generally find that you are more likely to pass AIDA requirements if you stop fixating on "passing requirements!"

Short answer is yes, but you don't need to be mega fit. A basic level of strength and fitness is required, this is a sport after-all. You'll be required to carry all of your own equipment to and from the water and it is expected that you can swim at least 300m in your gear without needing to stop for a break.

Scuba diving is a great transferable skill to have when joining a freediving course, in terms of comfort with equipment and time in open water. However, equalization that works on scuba does not always work while freediving. The tanks and the time on scuba are very forgiving when it comes to equalizing your ears, whereas while we are freediving it needs to be fast and efficient or we can easily cause damage to our ears. Check out our Free Online Frenzel Check,(https://www.emeraldfreediving.com/challenge-page/FrenzelEQ) which should show you if you are doing the correct equalisation method for freediving. If you're not, or your not sure, you can book a call with us to teach you how to equalise online, before you start your freediving course and save yourself the frustration of spending hours or even days struggling to get down to depth.

Ireland In Ireland, personal equipment is now fully included during our courses - with the condition that you confirm your sizes with us a minimum of 1 month prior to the course start date. We may be able to provide something for you if you book later than this but it is not guaranteed. We only have standard sizing suits and fins and will do our best to get as good a fit for you as possible with our gear. You may find a tailor made wetsuit is a good option for you, if you don't usually fit 'off-the-shelf' sizes. Basic freediving kit consists of; Mask, Snorkel, Fins, Wetsuit, Weights & Weight belt. You are, of course, welcome to bring any or all of your own personal equipment. Our professional recommendation for the the type of wetsuit for freediving or spearfishing in Ireland is a 7mm 2 piece freediving or spearo suit. Egypt Our courses in Egypt do not include equipment rental. This is to keep overall costs down for those that already have their own gear. We can help with suggestions on what and where to rent, and we may occasionally be able to offer kit rental ourselves. For Egypt, we recommend 5mm thickness from Jan-April, and 3mm from Sept-Dec. We will strive to provide you with weights on any of our Egypt or other offerings abroad. ___ Don't hesitate to message us with any questions you might have about equipment.

When it comes to freediving courses, coaching or training, It can be very difficult to compare things based solely on price or discern what you are getting for your money, because of this we don't price match. Our prices are very reasonable for the level that we teach at and we guarantee you will appreciate the value of this after your time with us, particularly if you have previous experience of training elsewhere. We have a wealth of experience to share and we pride ourselves at being amongst the best in the business. However, all that being said, if a discount is what you're looking for, we often run promotions for early season bookings so keep an eye on our website and social media!

We have limited spaces on our courses to ensure we can maintain a quality level of instruction, we fill these spots in advance and it is very rare that we can fill cancelled spots last minute. So by not attending the course you are booked on to there will be an empty space on that course. On average we get around 1 cancellation for each course that we run, many of them last minute, and reasons range from serious illness to bereavement and as much as we sympathize, we hope you can see how this could cost us dearly if we refunded all cancellations. However, we may be able to offer you a spot on a future course, as a last minute offering. We won't be able to pre-book it, as this would take away another paid spot from our course schedule. When we have a vacant space on a course we will notify all students on our cancellations waiting list and the first to book it, gets it. We could give anything from a few days to 24 hours notice of this vacant spot. Terms in detail; Cancel more than 1 month out - Full refund or move dates. 1 month to 2 weeks - 50% refund, we may be able to offer a last minute space on a future course. Less than 2 weeks - No refund, last minute future course offering at our discretion. Less than 48 hours to your course - We class this as a 'no-show'; No refund, no space on future course. Unfortunately, due to the nature of our business, and the small groups we take, we can't have any exceptions to this cancellation policy.