From flight deck to dive deck
PADI SCUBA instruction, try-dives, and guided ocean experiences from New Orleans to the Gulf Coast — taught by a career aviator who brings a pilot's discipline to every dive briefing.
Each section is its own page now — tap one to jump straight there, no endless scrolling.
Open Water, Discover SCUBA, 20 specialties, lionfish and adaptive programs — all opening 2027.
19 Gulf Coast and springs species with photos and field marks, plus the 10-question photo quiz.
29 PADI hand signals as short video clips of real divers, plus numbers 0–10, flashcards, and a 10-question quiz.
What Feet Wet Diving Co is, where we teach, and the people behind it — founder Melissa Day and Dr. John Day on dive safety & medical.
Three steps, no payment today. Fill in the booking form and get on the roster in order.
Diving with Feet Wet means diving with a purpose. Every course builds in reef etiquette — perfect buoyancy, no touching, nothing taken but pictures and lionfish — because the Gulf's ecosystems are the whole reason we get in the water.
Small classes, unhurried pacing, and standards taught the way aviation teaches them: briefed, practiced, and checked. Every offering below opens with the 2027 season.
The full certification course — knowledge development, confined-water skills, and four open-water dives — that earns you a license to dive anywhere in the world to 60 feet. No experience needed; if you can swim, you can start.
The flagship course. Class sizes stay small so nobody gets rushed off the platform.
Not ready to commit to certification? A Discover SCUBA Diving experience puts you on SCUBA in controlled conditions with an instructor at your elbow — no license required. Prefer to stay on the surface? Guided snorkeling excursions get you face-to-face with reefs, turtles, and rays.
Already certified? Go deeper, darker, and further with specialty training — including the Gulf's signature wreck diving.
Lionfish are beautiful — and devastating to Gulf reefs. Join a guided removal dive: learn safe spearfishing and handling technique, help clear an invasive species off local structure, and surface with one of the best-eating fish in the Gulf. Conservation you can taste.
The water doesn't care what's different about your body — neutral buoyancy is the great equalizer. Adaptive diving programs pair divers with disabilities with trained buddies and modified techniques and equipment, so more people can experience the freedom of weightlessness underwater.
Reach out before booking — every adaptive plan starts with a one-on-one conversation about your goals and needs.
A field guide and photo quiz built around the places Feet Wet actually dives — the Fort Pickens and St. Andrews jetties, the Perdido Key snorkel reef, the Big Lagoon grass flats, and the Florida springs. Nineteen species you're genuinely likely to meet, with the field marks that separate each one from its look-alikes. It's also a taster of our Fish Identification specialty: learn these before you get in, and every dive gets more interesting.
Photos are real photographs of each species from public sources for study use. Species notes reflect the northern Gulf and Florida springs sites Feet Wet dives. Sea turtles are protected — look, photograph, never touch or chase.
Ten photos, four names each. Pick a pool — mixed, or just the site you're diving next — and you'll get the deciding field mark after every answer, right or wrong.
Most signals can wait for a slate. These four can't — they're the ones that end dives and save them. If you learn nothing else, learn to give and recognise these instantly.
Air checks, depths and times all travel in numbers, and you usually have only one hand free. One to five is fingers up, palm facing your buddy. Six to nine turns the hand sideways — back of the hand to your buddy — and counts on from the thumb side. Ten is just a 1 followed by a 0.
Point at your buddy's pressure gauge (or tap your own and point at them) to ask. They answer with number signals, biggest digit first. 120 bar is signalled 1 → 2 → 0. In psi, divers round to the nearest hundred: 1,800 psi becomes 1 → 8. Agree units and the rounding rule in your pre-dive briefing, every time.
Make signals large and deliberate, at chest height, facing your buddy square-on. At night or in murk, shine your torch on your own hand — never in your buddy's eyes.
A signal isn't finished until it's answered — OK back, or the signal repeated to show it's understood. No answer means it wasn't seen. Move closer and signal again.
“Something is wrong” is only the first half. Follow it by pointing at the source — your ear, your mask, your gauge — so your buddy knows what they're helping with.
Signals vary a little between regions and training backgrounds. The pre-dive briefing is where you and your buddy confirm the set you'll both use — especially the air signals and your turn pressure.
Signal definitions follow the Recreational SCUBA Training Council (RSTC) Common Hand Signals for Recreational SCUBA Diving — the standard set taught in PADI courses — cross-checked against the PADI Open Water Diver signal chart. Sources: Wikipedia: Diver communication · SCUBA BSA (PADI signal chart, used with permission of International PADI, Inc.)
Every signal and number plays as a short looping video clip (MP4) — a few-second excerpt, with the sound removed, from real instructional dive footage of a diver performing the gesture in a pool, at the surface, or in open water, with real finger and arm movement. Clips autoplay muted when on screen and pause off-screen; if your device is set to reduce motion, a still frame from the same clip is shown instead. The number clips 0–10 come from the one-handed counting sequence in the Sidemounting.com video. Clip sources: Sport Diver, “Common SCUBA Diving Hand Signals” · Marcel van den Berg / Sairee Cottage IDC, “SCUBA Diving Hand Signals Explained” · SDI, “How To Do Common SCUBA Diving Hand Signals” · Dive Division, “HOW TO: SCUBA Signals” · Circle H SCUBA, “SCUBA Diving Hand Signals (PADI)” · Diver 101, “20 Hand Signals You Need to Know!” · Sidemounting.com, “Hand Signals for SCUBA Divers”. Watch the full videos for the complete demonstrations and narration. Where a source video labelled the signal on screen, the label was cropped or blurred out so the quiz stays honest.
Prepared as a study aid for Feet Wet Diving Co students. Signals are a study aid only and don't replace training with a PADI Instructor.
Feet Wet Diving Co is a veteran-owned PADI SCUBA instruction business based in New Orleans, launching its first season in 2027 — and booking now. We teach small, unhurried classes with the same briefed, practiced, and checked discipline aviation demands: PADI Open Water certification, Discover SCUBA try-dives and guided snorkeling, a full slate of specialty courses, lionfish removal excursions, and adaptive diving programs. No deposits are taken until course dates are set — every reservation is confirmed personally by email.
In aviation, "feet wet" is the radio call a pilot makes crossing the shoreline into over-water flight — the moment you leave the land behind and commit to the ocean. Divers know the feeling. Down here, we're always feet wet.
Start to specialty, in small classes where nobody gets rushed off the platform:
Based in Uptown New Orleans, with training sites across the metro area for confined water, and open-water diving across the northern Gulf Coast — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle.
The water we dive and teach in includes the Fort Pickens and St. Andrews jetties, the Perdido Key snorkel reef, Big Lagoon's grass flats, and Florida springs such as Morrison and Vortex — the same places in our Fish ID guide.
100% veteran-owned and operated — and built to welcome fellow veterans and service members, including through adaptive diving. Diving here also means diving with a purpose:
Melissa has spent her career in cockpits — she flew the Airbus as a captain for American Airlines. On the military side, she flew the H-60 helicopter for the 301st Rescue Squadron at Patrick AFB, Florida, and before that flew H-60 air assault for the Louisiana Army National Guard. Aviation taught her that the people who stay safe are the ones who brief honestly, train to standard, and never let schedule pressure outrank judgment. She teaches diving the same way.
The diving came early. Melissa earned her PADI Open Water certification in 2007 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and her Advanced Open Water in the Persian Gulf while deployed to Kuwait. On that same deployment she founded the Camp Buehring Dive Club, introducing fellow service members to the water and helping them advance their own ratings — morale, measured in salt water and shared wonder.
Underwater, she's a PADI Divemaster and a volunteer diver at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans, where she helps care for the animals in the Gulf of Mexico exhibit. She's now completing her PADI Open Water SCUBA Instructor certification — and Feet Wet Diving Co opens its first season in 2027.
Melissa Day · PADI No. 542064 · Divemaster, certified 26 August 2023 — Verify my PADI credentials on PADI Pro Chek.
PADI Divemaster completing her instructor certification; American Airlines Airbus captain and Air Force Reserve pilot — H-60 with the 301st Rescue Squadron. She leads every course, briefing, and dive.
A veteran and pilot, a physician at Touro Hospital in New Orleans, and a certified PADI Divemaster. Dr. Day provides in-house dive medical sign-offs for students and certified in-water assistance on dive programs.
We're pre-launch, and we'd rather be straight with you about that than overpromise. Here's the whole process:
Tell us the course or experience you want, roughly when in 2027, and who's diving. That's it — no payment.
Melissa replies personally, answers your questions, and holds your place on the 2027 roster in the order inquiries arrive.
When instructor certification is complete and the season calendar is set, roster spots get first pick of dates — before public booking opens.
Booking for the 2027 season is open now. Fill in the form below and it will draft your inquiry for Melissa — she answers every one herself. No payment today.
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