SSI (Scuba School International) has a lot of diving specialties courses.

If you want to go further in diving, there are no real options; you need to take some specialties courses.

If you do not know the in and the out of a particular type of scuba diving, this can lead to a potential accident.
For example diving at night without knowing the ins and outs can be dangerous, not only for you but also for your buddy or the group.
Why? Because you do not know how to signal with a light or a torch, which is important as you cannot see the hand signal of your buddies during a night dive.

So learning specialty courses is as important as learning to dive for the first time. This is why SSI has many specialties diving courses for you to be comfortable in any situations and any particular scuba dives.

Diving Specialties courses are also essential to have as you cannot go to the next level if you do miss a primary specialty certification.
Just an example: You have the Nitrox and Deep Diver certification, and you want to go further and deeper than 40 meters (130 feet) which are the technical way. So if you are not a certified rescue diver, you cannot start tec diving as technical diving requires you to be a rescue diver too.

What are the most important scuba diving specialties courses to learn?

All! It's all about you and your scuba diving needs.

One diving specialty should not be considered less important than the other one.
For example, if some divers feel comfortable about diving from a boat, some are not, just thinking to do a back roll or a negative entry make them nervous.

This is where the diving specialty course boat diving become famous, and even more.
Why? Because the people who have taken the boat diving specialty course will be a lot better and responsible than the divers, who did not.

At the end the certified boat divers have learned many types of entry adapted to different dive sites, weather, waves, currents and they will secure their gear properly as well as to do a proper exit in many different conditions.
The last but not the least, they will also know the basic boat's language and knowledge as well as how to move safely and behave properly on a boat and in the water around the boat.

Is there some specialties diving courses that Scotty's recommend in first hand?

If all specialties courses are necessary, you should know that air is not the perfect gas to dive with and by far!

We have a lot to say about diving on air; diving engineers didn't mix gases to become hyperoxic gases, enriched air nitrox and so just for the pleasure to do it, diving with air is bad!
If air can suit for some recreational diving, you will often experience that after 2 or 3 dives on air, you feel tired which is bad.

Scotty's Dive Centers are strongly recommending to dive with nitrox, as a matter of fact we are so concerned for your safety that if you take a nitrox course with us (course duration 1 day), during the rest of your stay, holiday or vacation you will have a nitrox gas in your tank for FREE!
That's not for nothing that some well-known and very reputable diving agency like GUE, dive nitrox and below 30 meters (130 feet) dive trimix.

So yes, if there is one specialty that we recommend before most of all is to take the nitrox specialty course.
So overall we recommend, depending your level, these three essentials:

• Enriched Air Nitrox Specialty course: The safest way to breath underwater.
• The stress and rescue course: A crucial one, the certification is also a pass to many specialties as well as becoming a tech diver.
• The Deep Diver course: one day or another you will go deeper, this an essential specialty in recreational diving and a pass to become a tec diver as well.