Mitchell Scuba College

It was such a terrible shock to hear of the passing of Mitch, today. He was not only my instructor and mentor, he was our friend. He will be remembered with nothing but respect and admiration. We lost a damned good man on Jan 30^th, 2015! Godspeed!

This a long overdue review. I and my husband got scuba certified through Mitch in Summer 2014. So far as of 2015 we have logged 20 dives and we made it safe and sound, never had any injuries and got to enjoy the underwater world because of him. I panicked the first time I went in the ocean in Oahu but Mitch helped me overcome my fears and I am addicted to scuba now. His training saved me and my husband’s life and our gear (story below).
Mitch is an awesome instructor. A note though: he being a former fire fighter, he makes jokes, yells (well nothing compared to boot camp though, more like using a louder voice) using crude language. Look at his truck; its been keyed several times. Tells you he can be a d! ck. But me being a truck driver, I was used to it and had fun learning from him. If you are easily offended, well… maybe think of doing dog grooming or basket weaving instead because I’ve been to a dive where I was faced with life or death situations (Mitch’s training saved me and my husband from a sh! tty incompetent so called divemaster elsewhere on vacation). Twice that so called divemaster ascended way too fast since he was late on picking up another charter or something and told us to follow closely behind him but I remembered Mitch drilling us that we were NOT to ascend faster than our bubbles we blow out. That ‘divemaster’ was upset we didnt follow closely but he was later complaining of joint pain in his knees later. You know what that means! The God damned bends! That guy could’ve gotten us killed if I didnt follow Mitch’s training. If you cant put up with Mitch’s barking, SCUBA ain’t for you! Period! Other shops baby you but who’s going to baby you when you and a dive buddy at the same dive skill level are 12m underwater in an emergency situation? What? You gonna cry for your Bamboo Reef dive instructors to come and fetch you at that point? F$$k no! That’s why you learn from the best: a highly experienced former SFFD rescue diver.
He hates it when people wear their masks on top of your head like you see 90% of inexperienced people do and WILL get on you for that. But his barking saved my $ 100+ prescription dive mask from sinking into the abyss when I and my kayak was flipped by a big wave in big island Hawaii on another dive. Luckily I always remember to wear my mask around my neck instead as he told us. All my gear was intact. ;D
Love how he taught me to wash my gear in pine oil which doesnt ruin the gear and makes it smell heavenly and kills germs!
He reminds me fondly of Gunnery Sergeant R L Ermey from FMJ, but less salty. Yes he does tap you on the lip repeatedly if you fail to blow bubbles and hold your breath underwater. But lets face it, his barking is effective to save your sorry bee hind in the potentially merciless big blue. Also he is VERY straight forward with you telling what you are doing wrong. In the business end, you’ll enjoy this aspect of him because he will NOT rip you off selling you sh! tty dive gear at 3x the price like other dive shops do. He sells and loans ONLY to former students. His prices for his courses and gear are MUCH cheaper than any other dive shops.
A BIG thank you to Mitch for saving my and my husband’s life! I am forever grateful for his guidance and look forward to taking advanced courses with him in the future.

I took Scuba Mitch’s open water certification course about 5 years ago and I’m still grateful! (So much so that I’m compelled to write a review 5 years later…) We’ve now been on about 50 dives around the world and I’m much better trained than all of my friends (including my husband :) Scuba Mitch is thorough and takes his business seriously but is a total riot at the same time. After his course I became one of those annoying divers who notices all if the things other divers do wrong and it stuck! I’m now in the process of my advanced cert overseas and the instructors are impressed with everything I know — Scuba Mitch gets all the credit. He’s become a household name with us. Highly highly recommended, you won’t find any better.

I agree with previous posts.
Mitch can be annoying/​irritating/​prejudiced but overall is entirely effective. His assistant Tony is equally effective in his water instruction.
My lady and I just dove all over Kona, completely independently, and were even complimented on our inexperienced comprehension. Mitch even shared his vintage HI dive guides that produced great days of diving.
We were definitely trained well by Mitch to start learning to SCUBA on our own.
Will probably take additional courses.

I took Mitch’s scuba class recently and found it to be exactly what I wanted. He explains things well, gets to the point, and makes sure everybody has the skills to scuba. Pay attention, be prepared, use your brain and you’ll be fine. Mitch is also really funny and just an overall nice guy who knows his stuff when it comes to scuba. Thanks to his class, I feel confident to go diving many more times in the future.

Update 1÷5÷2016
I’m sad to say Mitch has passed away.
I only dove with Tony, his Divemaster or assistant instructor I think, once, but I guess he’s the guy you should look for if you want similar training. Tony’s much nicer and doesn’t yell. I have no idea if Tony teaches though or how to even contact him.
My favorite tips from Mitch that I noticed other new divers have issues with:
* washing gear (and using pinesol on neoprene)
* looping your fins around your arms as you enter and exit the water so you don’t lose them.
* adjusting the fin straps for fast donning in the surf zone («sit in your easy chair)
* what to do when a wave is about to hit you in the surf zone
Hopefully you’ll find an instructor that will show you these tricks as well.
I’m past 200 dives now and have started dives beyond the recreational realm and credit Mitch for giving me a strong diving foundation.
Thanks and RIP Mitch.
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I was first certified by Mitch almost 3 three ago. With well over 100 dives now in local waters I feel like I can look back at my training and give a proper review. I did eventually get my Advanced and Rescue training from Mitch but this review will just focus on the Scuba Diver (Open Water) certification class. If you enjoyed the class you can decide if you want to take more classes with Mitch for yourself.
I think the most important question I could ask myself about Mitch’s training is would I send my loved ones to get certified with him? The answer is yes, absolutely. The reason why is because Mitch sticks to some of the older training methodologies.
For example he still makes sure you learn Dive Tables (this is optional with PDAI but very important because it shows new divers the deeper you go, the less time you have at that depth), makes sure you can do the fundamentals in the pool (clear mask, regulator recovery, etc) and actually does an assessment of your skills before going to the ocean. If he does not believe you are ready for the the ocean portion of the certification he will not let you go, and that is for your own safety. He is willing to work with those that are not yet ready to go to the ocean though, but the best thing to do is start swimming on your own to get comfortable in water.
Most importantly though, he works on your watermanship skills. This is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of the class as it is the foundation for all water activities. Having strong watermanship skills leads to comfort in water, comfort in water leads to not panicking underwater should anything happen.
Mitch makes you wash your gear after dives in the ocean. It was a pain at the time but in retrospect this was an essential lesson he taught. If you remain a vacation diver that rents everything, then yeah, you’ll probably never use this. But if you become a diver and buy your own gear, taking care of your gear is essential. Learning how to properly maintain your gear ultimately is a safety issue and I’m so glad I learned how right off the bat. I remember meeting other dives trained else where and having them ask me how to clean their BC and other gear. I was shocked.
The last dive of the certification was a scary one at the time, but it was the dive I valued the most. Mitch let us go out on our own without a dive master or himself. This was a confidence boosting dive. It shows us that if we dived within our training we were good with just our buddy. California diving typically doesn’t have the silly follow the PADI guide type of diving, so the confidence gained from this dive was the true first step on how I became a diver.
Oh yeah, he yells a lot, but it’s for your own good and he means well.

A bit over a year ago, I was looking for an instructor to teach my daughter SCUBA. Well, I’m sure Mitch could smell the over-​protective father on me from a mile down the street, but he was totally cool about it. I sincerely got the vibe that he treated it like he was teaching his own daughter. It’s hard for me to offer higher praise than that.
As for the instruction my daughter got, it was definitely better than the initial instruction I got many years ago (and that was the goal). All in all, it’s a good start for my daughter.

I took Mitch’s course about two months back and have tested my diving skills with my fiancé once more in the cold waters of Monterey Bay. Final verdict is Mitch’s course taught me the necessary skills and kept me comfortable in the water.
Like everyone says, he’s no nonsense, but I’d rather be taught properly about a skill that has the potential to make me seriously ill or lead to death. Moving on from that more serious note, I really liked Mitch’s knowledge of diving. We had a few. actually I don’t know what they did, but I seem to remember Stanford neuro… something or other. They asked some more difficult questions regarding the science of diving and Mitch was able to answer the questions and more importantly answered them without getting annoyed or moving on because it wasn’t really important to just learning the necessary dive skills.
Pricing was incredibly reasonable and more importantly I feel more confident then some of my friends who did their PADI course. (Mitch does rag on PADI) The price was really fair. With some courses you have to separately for books and often equipment, Mitch’s included gear, books, dvd, everything you needed to do the course.
Lastly I’ll throw in one reason to do Mitch’s NAUI course rather than PADI. I think when one of my friends did her PADI course it was roughly 300 (around 2 years ago) and she was only allowed to dive up to 30 feet and had to pay extra to dive with PADI certified divers when she went on vacation. With Mitch we went on a 50 foot dive on our second dive, and we’re allowed to dive up to that level by ourselves. (ourselves meaning with my fiancé Steve)
Ohp one last tip:
Mitch has this one signal when he brings his hands to his chest, like he’s moving something closer to his chest and then he points his forefinger. This is usually when you’re doing an ascent. Anyway that means when you’re doing the ascent continuously breath out ONE breath of air. Trust me he’ll know if you breathed in on your way up.

I just completed my NAUI Scuba course with Mitch he knows his stuff and is really safe. If you want to learn how to dive right and safe then look no further.
If you want to know your stuff and you can listen, follow instructions, and are not a crybaby then this place is hands down the best for you. If you like to whine, have someone hold you hand and dive for you then find another instructor or another sport (hey it’s not for everyone)
He goes at a pace that is right and easily understandable he goes through all your skills until you are comfortable. Then gives constructive feedback so you know what you can improve on.
I really enjoyed this course and will be back to take my advanced Scuba course.
This course was a great price of $ 369 which includes everything no extras for gear or books like some places charge and you will have an open water certification

Myself and fiancée just completed our NAUI open water certification with Mitch so we can dive on our honeymoon, and would highly recommend him to everyone who wants to learn to dive.
As a novice I found his style very helpful — tough love for sure, but diving can kill you if you don’t get it right, so we wanted to understand the issues to be able to enjoy diving and be safe.
We did research ahead of time and decided that we wanted to complete a NAUI course over other alternatives — you can do your own research to make your own decision, but one thing worth mentioning that we noticed is that Mitch is a Course Director with Naui, i.e. he teaches the instructors which sounds pretty good to me. Having completed the course Mitch was a wealth of knowledge, with a huge amount of experience and anecdotes to tell based on it.
His approach might not work for everyone — he’s not PC, he doesn’t hold back on criticism and (while our class seemed to be a strong group) he won’t pass you if he doesn’t think you’re safe to dive for any reason. But at the end of the day, if you’re not comfortable enough in the water to progress through the class what hope do you have in an emergency situation under 60ft+ of water? (He’ll give you much more graphic examples of potential emergency situations than I can give justice to!)
Having said all of that, we liked Mitch, felt that any criticism was only to make us better and safer divers and loved the open water dives in Monterey.
Finally his price is all in (course notes, tuition, pool and open water dives, all gear and equipment you need), the only other costs we had were getting to and staying in Monterey. That isn’t the case for almost all of the other dive courses we looked at.

If you want to learn to Scuba — stop looking. You just found the place.
Mitch is tough, knows his stuff, and is safe. By the time you finish his course you’ll know everything you need to know and more.
I took the standard scuba class and learned everything required for NAUI plus all the extra life experience tips from an instructor that’s been diving for decades. If you want to know your stuff and you can listen, follow instructions, and are not a cry-​baby then this place is hands down the best for you. If you like to whine then find another instructor or another sport.

I have received both my NAUI Scuba Diver and Advanced Scuba Diver certifications from Mitch. He knows what he’s doing, I doubt there is a more experienced SCUBA diver in the bay area. He brings a wealth of experience to the classroom.
Selling you overpriced equipment or extracting money from you in various ways is not his goal. He doesn’t run a dive shop, he just teaches out of his garage and the Brisbane pool (which is a great pool for these purposes, by the way), and the equipment he sells to you is high quality and at near zero-​profit prices. He can be really intense, especially if you do or say something that reveals a lack of knowledge or intelligence, but he’s just trying to drill into your head really important information that will keep you alive diving.
If you want to just grab a quick and easy certification so you can hop on a plane and dive in easy tropical locations, then this course might be too much for you. However, if you want to really learn to dive, and experience and learn from the challenges of cold water diving in Monterey (which will make diving in warm water feel like a walk in the park) Mitchell Diving College is for you.

Mitch has been diving for over 40 years and he’s a former firefighter– Safety and smarts are his number 1 priority. And when you’re under the water with a tank on your back, you need to be safe and smart. This class was super informative and Mitch and his assistant instructors, Rick, Keith and Tony are no nonsense and want to make sure that they are thorough in what they teach. I had a great time and look forward to furthering my Scuba education with Mitchell Scuba.

So the GF wants to learn how to SCUBA dive. Having taken both PADI and NAUI classes back in the stone age, I opted to send her to a NAUI class. While my past experience with both were good, the past NAUI class I took was just bit better.
I also wanted a instructor who was not attached to a dive shop and who would give honest opinions about various equipment. It may not be the instructor’s fault, but I tend to get a sales pitch every time I turn around in a dive shop.
Did I mention I was cert’ed in the stone age? I decided to take the full class with the GF because I wanted: a) more than a pool refresher since I was so rusty; and b) I wanted to see the GF do her skills myself since you and your dive buddy really do have your lives in each other’s hands. Good thing, too since a lot of things have changed since I took my first classes.
Mitch does not pull any punches. The guy is brutally honest. If he thinks you are too stupid to dive, please believe him and go play golf…
Note: he does sell some very basic equipment, so technically he is a retailer. However, he does not push his equipment and he only sells to students and former students. And it’s also a screaming deal for some reason…

Do you believe in tough love?
If you are one of those people with a ‘delicate’ nature, require a ton of hand-​holding, or are offended by off-​color jokes then you may not like this course. Heck, you may just not want to scuba at all.
However, if you are wanting to get scuba certified and want to make sure you aren’t going to kill yourself someday doing something stupid, then Mitch is your guy. He is a straight talking, down to earth, nuts and bolts kind of instructor. He is not there to gouge you for cash, then let you slide through the course just so he can make a buck.
He has been diving for over 50 years — even before official scuba certification existed. He is as knowledgeable about diving in Hawaii as he is off the CA coast. He grew up on Maui! NOTE: if you are a slacker and do not take this stuff seriously, you really could kill yourself or someone else. So if Mitch thinks you are in idiot and are not competent to do the appropriate skills to dive correctly, he will not give you a pass on the certification. That being said, he will definitely work with you on whatever the issue seems to be. He keeps his classes limited to only 8 at a time to make sure that each person gets enough individual attention/​instruction.
He is hilariously funny as well. You will come out of this course feeling confident that you can dive just about everywhere. After all, if you can do your test dives in freakin’ cold Monterey Bay water with crappy visibility, the warm waters of the Caribbean (or elsewhere) will be a breeze.
In case you were wondering, he is a NAUI instructor, not PADI. There are some other PADI instructors in the Bay Area that are sketchy and unreliable. Mitch is a solid, honest guy, who is highly experienced and a great teacher. If you are thinking about taking scuba in the Bay Area, give him a call/​email. Just talk to the other instructors before you sign up; you will probably get a better idea just from that. He rocks.
P. S. I was in Scott H.‘s class (I just discovered that he wrote review here too); as you can see, we were both really happy with the class. Two completely independent endorsements.

If you’re going for your scuba cert you’re not going to have a whole lot of experience to compare with so choose wisely.
If you want to learn scuba from someone who has been saving lives his entire professional career, loves the ocean, and doesn’t need to nickle and dime you then go to Mitch. Reminds me of my old football coach with his tough love style so whats not to love. If you’re a serious student and really want to learn how to be a safe and responsible diver, go to Mitchell’s Scuba College and you won’t regret it.
If you want to just get your cert and go f around in the ocean then it doesn’t really matter where you go does it?

Mitch is the best SCUBA instructor ever!
He’s got a ton of experience, knows the material he’s teaching, is a stickler for safety, passes along the important stuff, and most importantly, is a great all around guy. He’s a straight shooter, funny as heck (unless you’re the easily offended, «why, the universe circles around me» type), and most importantly, won’t be trying to rip you off in either the course or scuba gear.
If you’re thinking about SCUBA and want to be as safe as you can, and learn it right the first time, take his class.
You won’t regret it!

What can I say — Mitch is a old school, non-​PC, tough love type of scuba instructor. Exactly the guy you want to be teaching you scuba. Believe me, you could be coddled by the PADI course instructors at the local dive shop, rushed through an accelerated course, and you would get your certifcation, but would you really know what you were doing? I say no. I know, having done just that, and feeling miserable about it — sure, I could have passed the class, but did I learn anything? Did I trust myself? No.
I took the NAUI open water diver course with Mitch last year, and knew instinctively that this was the right way to go: first, his background — a retired fire fighter, life long diver, more knowledgeable than any dive shop jockey you could ever find. Secondly, he is clearly not in it for the money. His courses are reasonably priced, his gear (should you choose to buy it) is affordable, tested and «approved.» He could give a sh*t whether you pass, and will tell you so repeatedly. You may not like his quips, or comments, but ultimately, you are there to learn how to dive knowledgeably and safely. Whether he admits it or not, he truly cares that you know what the heck you are doing, and knows exactly where to focus, based on years of experience. I stumbled upon his classes at the Brisbane pool (itself a hidden treasure) and signed up for his two weekend course.
An aside — I missed the open water dives the first time around due to prior commitments — Mitch agreed to meet me, solo, in Monterey for two days to do my dives, and though it was tough, we (I) made it through with flying colors. By the end I felt like I really knew what I was doing.
If you are looking to learn to dive, I could not recommend a more reliable teacher. You may not like him, but you will learn all that you need to know and more. 100% yes.

My fiancé and I first learned of Mitchell Scuba College through friends who highly recommended their Scuba Diver course. We had a blast and learned how to hang with the fishes. Two of our friends were getting open water instructions from a large dive shop at the same, so we were able to actively compare notes. (One of those friends asked us if our instructor would take her for a refresher later because she didn’t feel comfortable yet — and this was between her dive training days with her shop!)
The key to our training versus others that I’ve noticed is that we felt confident going out by ourselves (just us two) in new locations, immediately after the training. We were a bit perturbed by operators who tried to convince us we needed more guided hand-​holding because we should be jittery as newbies. That’s why the course teaches you to dive within your limits. And our instructor, he did a fantastic job of helping me work through my skill troubles. All that knowledge from all those years of hard-​core diving and rescues… We’ve gone back for more advance training, and for our dive gear loot. :)