5 Reasons To Choose Aquanauts As Your Go-To Scuba Diving Shop

There are an awful lot of dive shops out there and with the ever growing presence of online dive shops, it can be hard to get your bearings as a customer. With so much choice out there, why should you choose Aquanauts as your go-to scuba diving shop? Well, what makes us stand out is that we’re more than just a shop. Diving is in our blood (literally) - we’re a family inherited business that’s been run by divers for divers since 1986. All the products we sell are carefully selected, and are all items that we would use ourselves and in our diving lessons. These are just a few key characteristics of what we do at Aquanauts:

We’re Run By Divers For Divers

Aquanauts was founded in the 1980s by senior diving instructor, Douglas Allen, who created a PADI training centre that quickly became Plymouth’s most popular dive centre. Doug’s children, Brian and Noeleen grew up amongst the divers, and when they reached adulthood inherited the community that Doug had created. Finding the perfect location on Plymouth Barbican, Brian and Noeleen started selling carefully selected products, whilst growing the training centre at the same time.

To this day, every single member of the team is a skilled diver who can provide advice to customers based on their own experiences. When the Aquanauts scuba diving shop was opened in 2004, Brian was adamant they would only sell products that they themselves would use, and this remains the focus today.

We’re Committed To Ocean Conservation

Teaching diving to a high safety standard has always gone hand in hand with promoting how we as divers can do our part to protect the oceans that we love. Over the years, we’ve taken part in a range of conservation projects, including sea search dives and a number of ocean clean ups. For each new PADI Open Water diver we train, we make a £10 donation to PADI Aware, a non-profit organisation committed to driving local action for global ocean conservation. Within the shops itself, we do what we can to make our processes as green as possible. This includes working with eco-conscious suppliers, such as Fourth Element whose ethos is led by an ‘ocean positive’ movement. All the packaging that we receive is reused, recycled and repurposed, and in recent months we’ve had a big drive on preventing old neoprene wetsuits from going to landfill, with the help of Circular Flow.

We’re Not Just A Scuba Diving Shop - We’re A Club & Training Centre Too!

Many scuba dive shops function purely for retail purposes, however a huge part of what we do at Aquanauts is training and building a friendly diving community. We’re always looking to share our love of diving with new divers which is why we offer a range of beginner courses, including the PADI Discover Scuba Diving course and the PADI Open Water course. Alongside these we provide training in a range of specialist and advanced scuba diving courses for experienced divers looking to broaden their skills. This includes courses on wreck diving, nitrox diving and deep diving to name just a few. As a club, we host regular dive trips, with 50% off basic equipment hire on our boat and club shore dives. We’re a social bunch, and enjoy hanging out both in and out of the water.

We’re Committed To Making Diving As Affordable As Possible

There’s no getting around the fact that diving equipment gets expensive. That’s why, as a scuba diving shop, we have a few systems in place to help make buying your own kit that little bit more affordable. One of these systems is our optional Aquapoints system. By creating an Aquapoints account, when you buy something, be it a piece of kit or signing up for a course, you’ll receive points to put towards future purchases. In addition to this, we also have our price match promise, which means that if you find a product cheaper with another UK diving shop online we’ll be happy to match the price where possible (excluding Amazon, eBay or any discounted items). All you need to do is contact us prior to placing an order with the product details, and the link of the product from the competitor's site you want us to match. We will check details and match the price for you.

We Provide Equipment For All Types Of Diving In One Place

Our scuba diving shop offers a diverse product range that caters for all types of divers, including free divers as well as snorkelers. This enables you to get all your gear in one place, from crucial safety equipment like BCDs, dive computers and regs, to wetsuits, drysuitsand accessories like cameras and lighting. So whether you’re going cold water diving, planning a trip in the tropics, or need equipment for a freediving excursion, we’ve got you covered, whatever your experience level. You can purchase all our products online or pop into our Plymouth scuba diving shop to try out our products in person. Either way, our knowledgeable team of divers are on hand to help you choose the best kit for you, be it at the end of a phone or message, or in-store.

Please don’t hesitate to contact our team with any diving-related queries, or for more information on what we do at Aquanauts.