Bermuda's reefs hold one of the richest collections of shipwrecks in the Atlantic, from scattered timbers of early sailing ships to the steel hulls of 19th- and 20th-century steamers. Most of them can be enjoyed on an ordinary recreational dive, but a little extra training makes a big difference to what you see and how safely you see it.
Courses such as Wreck Diver, Underwater Navigator and Peak Performance Buoyancy teach you to plan a dive around a wreck, find your way across a broken-up site and back to the boat, recognise hazards like sharp metal, collapsed decks and fishing line, and move without stirring up silt or brushing fragile structure. Deep and nitrox training let you visit the deeper wrecks with a proper margin of safety, and photography courses help you bring home a record of what you found.
Above all, good training helps protect the wrecks themselves. Taking a course never gives anyone permission to take anything from a wreck. Under Bermuda's Historic Wrecks Act 2001, removing or interfering with anything on a historic wreck without a licence is against the law, so look, photograph and leave every site as you found it.
These are the PADI courses most specific to wreck diving. Each name links to PADI's own course page; ages and prerequisites are PADI's (some dive centres set their own, so always check when you book).
Four dives with an instructor, spread over at least two days, built around surveying and mapping a wreck, finning styles that keep silt down, spotting hazards such as sharp metal, collapsed sections and entanglement, and laying and following a guideline from a reel. Typical extra kit is a dive light, a slate and compass for mapping, and a line and reel.
On Bermuda's wrecks: Bermuda's reef line holds hundreds of wrecks, from broken-up timber and iron hulls lying in shallow water to steel ships with intact sections. The course teaches you to read a site, plan your route around it and leave it as you found it, which is the core skill for almost every wreck dive here.
Three dives on compass work, multi-leg courses with several turns, judging distance by kick cycles or time, and using natural clues such as sand ripples, reef edges and the sun to stay oriented.
On Bermuda's wrecks: Many Bermuda wrecks are scattered debris fields rather than one tidy hull, often lying among reef spurs and gullies that look alike. Good navigation lets you cover a site methodically and get back to the mooring line without surfacing in the wrong place.
Two dives fine-tuning how much weight you carry and where, achieving a steady hover and good trim, and controlling ascents and descents precisely, which also cuts air use.
On Bermuda's wrecks: Fine buoyancy is what stops a diver kicking up sediment, crashing into fragile timbers or brushing coral that has grown over a wreck. PADI itself recommends it alongside Wreck Diver to protect visibility and avoid touching the wreck.
Four dives practising systematic search patterns to locate objects, planning and running a search as a team, and the safe use of a lift bag.
On Bermuda's wrecks: Treat this as a navigation and search-pattern course: the methodical search skills are useful for covering a scattered wreck site or finding lost dive gear on sand. It must never be used to raise anything from a historic wreck. Under Bermuda's Historic Wrecks Act 2001 nothing may be removed from, or interfered with on, a historic wreck (more than 50 years old) without a licence, and taking this course gives no such right.
How to recognise the common features of wooden and metal ships, the clues that help identify a vessel and its use, how to research a site afterwards and what to do with what you record, plus the laws and limits that apply to wreck sites. Two open water wreck dives.
On Bermuda's wrecks: Many of Bermuda's wrecks are broken up and unidentified or only partly identified. This course trains you to look rather than take: to read a hull, a fitting or a cargo pattern and record it, which is exactly the kind of diver observation that adds to the island's wreck history. It suits divers who want to understand wrecks without going inside them.
Blue Water Divers, a PADI 5-Star Instructor Development Centre at the Royal Naval Dockyard, has taught diving in Bermuda since 1968 and runs dives and courses all year round, weather permitting. Get in touch with them to find out which of these courses are available when you plan to visit.
Taking a course never gives permission to take anything from a wreck. Under the Historic Wrecks Act 2001, nothing may be removed from or interfered with on a historic wreck without a licence. How Bermuda's wrecks are protected →
Underwater archaeology is about learning from a wreck without taking it apart. Before anyone thinks of digging, archaeologists record a site exactly as it lies: they lay a baseline tape along the wreck, measure the position of each timber, cannon, ballast stone or iron fitting from fixed points, sketch and draw the layout on waterproof film, and photograph everything, increasingly building 3D models from hundreds of overlapping pictures. Those notes and drawings become a scale plan that can be studied, compared with old records and checked again in later years to see how the site is changing.
That is why good practice is to lift nothing. Once an object leaves the seabed it starts to decay unless it goes straight into expensive conservation, and its exact position, which is often the most useful clue of all, is lost for ever. In Bermuda the Historic Wrecks Act 2001 makes this the law: interfering with or removing anything from a protected wreck needs a licence, and licences go to properly planned projects with qualified people. A training course teaches you to record a site, never gives you the right to recover from it.
For a diver who wants to take part, the usual path is to start with an introductory course, such as the Nautical Archaeology Society's online 'Discover Underwater Archaeology' modules, which can be taken from home, or the PADI Wreck Detective specialty where it is offered. Practise survey skills and fine buoyancy on ordinary dives, then contact the National Museum of Bermuda, whose curatorial staff oversee wreck research on the island and take volunteers, to ask about upcoming projects. Licensed surveys by the Museum and visiting universities have welcomed trained local volunteers in the past, and careful observations or photographs from recreational divers, reported rather than removed, are always useful.
The whole archaeological process from finding a site through research, survey and recording to publishing and archiving, with an underwater focus in the underwater version.
History of the discipline, archival research, ship construction, search methods and remote sensing, survey and mapping, photography and video, conservation, law and ethics, and planning and reporting a project.
Part I centres on non-intrusive 'pre-disturbance' survey: baselines and tape measurements, offsets and trilateration, drawing a site plan, photography, recording finds where they lie, and the law and ethics of wreck sites. Part II puts this into practice on a real site of your choice.
Scientific diving skills to AAUS standards: navigation, search patterns, lift bags, underwater mapping and survey, with marine archaeology listed among the field techniques alongside coral survey.
The basics of underwater archaeology, especially mapping a section of a real wreck site by trilateration and recording it on a slate.
Real survey, mapping, photogrammetry, excavation and recording of Bermuda wrecks under professional supervision.
The full professional discipline: history and ship construction, survey and excavation, conservation, heritage law and management, with fieldwork and a thesis.
Bermuda has a long record of training divers in archaeological survey. A Basic Course in Underwater Archaeological Surveying and Mapping was run on the island by the Georgia Archaeological Institute and the Ocean Research Foundation, with the Bermudian diver Nick Hutchings. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Brown University projects on HMS Vixen and the floating dock used Earthwatch and Museum volunteers, and Bermudian volunteers joined the Institute of Nautical Archaeology's excavation of the Warwick in 2008-2012. If you took part in any of these, or have records of other courses, we would love to hear from you at [email protected].
| National Museum of Bermuda (Royal Naval Dockyard) | Oversees underwater archaeology on the island and holds the finds and records. Hosts university field schools and takes volunteers, including remote volunteers; ask the curator about current projects. |
| Department of Environment and Natural Resources / Historic Wrecks Authority | Runs the Historic Wrecks Act 2001: any survey that touches a site, or any excavation, needs a Wreck Investigation Licence, so volunteers take part through a licensed project. Report anything you find here. |
| Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI) | Shipwreck gallery with the Teddy Tucker collection; children's camps and school programmes, including an underwater archaeology camp week. |
| Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) | The main international training body for divers and non-divers, with online courses that can be taken from Bermuda. |