scoooba

Learn

Every lesson. Free. Whether or not you ever take a course.

71 lessons across 4 courses — about 5 hours of reading — generated from the course documents themselves, most with a quick check after each section and the real recording slates to practise on.

No account. No sign-up. Nothing recorded about you. Read one section or all of it.

What this is, and what it isn't. These are the courses' own knowledge development, published in full. Working through them will teach you the method — and it earns you nothing on paper. A certification attests that an instructor watched you do the work in water, which no website can do. The reading is free; the card is not, and it is arranged the ordinary way through a dive center.

Structure

Reef Cartographer

Georeferenced reef maps from consumer sonar and photogrammetry, built around no-contact conservation and repeatable change detection.

10 lessons · 60 min · from the Reef Cartographer Student Handbook, v05.008

See lesson details
  1. 01 Welcome 4 min
  2. 02 Module 1: Acoustic Bathymetry and the Sonar Footprint 8 min
  3. 03 Module 2: Optical Photogrammetry and the Baseline 4 min
  4. 04 Module 3: Underwater Optics and the Real Reason Your Camera Lies 5 min
  5. 05 Module 4: Data Fusion and Registration 6 min
  6. 06 Module 5: Surface Operations and Boat Strike 7 min
  7. 07 Module 6: Team Diving and Human Factors 7 min
  8. 08 Module 7: Why You’re Really Here — Reef Conservation 3 min
  9. 09 Team Pre-Dive Procedures 13 min
  10. 10 What Success Looks Like 3 min

Reference — outside the lesson sequence

Start Reef Cartographer About the course

Life

Reef Demographer

A repeatable, relative-index census of reef life from 360° capture, AI-assisted counting you confirm by hand, and iNaturalist species IDs.

24 lessons · 78 min · from the Reef Demographer Course Guide, v1.0

See lesson details
  1. 01 Section Two: Knowledge Development 1 min
  2. 02 Module 1 — The Method: What a Reef Demographer Does 4 min
  3. 03 Module 2 — Visibility and the Detection Radius 5 min
  4. 04 Module 3 — The Camera and the Capture 5 min
  5. 05 Module 4 — The Survey Pattern 5 min
  6. 06 Module 5 — Counting and Species Identification 4 min
  7. 07 Module 6 — Team Operations and Human Factors 4 min
  8. 08 Module 7 — The Index, the Noise Floor, and Limitations 4 min
  9. 09 Module 8 — Going Further: Community Structure (Optional) 1 min
  10. 10 Module 9 — AI-Assisted Counting: the Machine Proposes, You Decide 3 min
  11. 11 Section Three: Open Water Training Execution 1 min
  12. 12 Skill Session 1 — Survey Dive Planning (Dry, Reviewed Gate) 9 min
  13. 13 Dive 1 — Calibration and Practice Run (No Camera) 6 min
  14. 14 Dive 2 — The Survey Ring (First Hexagon) 4 min
  15. 15 Dive 3 — Re-occupation and the Noise Floor 6 min
  16. 16 Dive 4 — Independent Capstone Survey 3 min
  17. 17 Dive 5 — Half-Radius Diagnostic Check (Optional) 4 min
  18. 18 Certification Performance Checklist 1 min
  19. 19 Section Four: Analysis and the Limitations Statement 1 min
  20. 20 What the Demographer Brings to the Analysis 1 min
  21. 21 What the Calculator Computes 1 min
  22. 22 The Noise Floor and the Reading Rule 1 min
  23. 23 The Limitations Statement 3 min
  24. 24 The Data Package 1 min
Start Reef Demographer About the course

The water

Reef Hydrocaster

A diver-powered hydrocast: occupy a station on a mapped reef and profile its temperature, light and clarity, with every value carrying a measured uncertainty rather than an assumed one.

18 lessons · 118 min · from the Reef Hydrocaster Course Guide, v1.10 · submitted to PADI, pending approval

See lesson details
  1. 01 Section Two — Knowledge Development 1 min
  2. 02 Topic 1: Why Measure the Water Next to the Coral 9 min
  3. 03 Topic 2: What Counts as a Measurement 6 min
  4. 04 Topic 3: Uncertainty and Comparison Thresholds 13 min
  5. 05 Topic 4: Temperature Structure Over a Reef 9 min
  6. 06 Topic 5: Light in the Water Column 9 min
  7. 07 Topic 6: Measuring Clarity with a Black Disc 13 min
  8. 08 Topic 7: Two Coefficients, One Water 8 min
  9. 09 Topic 8: Prediction, Re-occupation and Attribution 8 min
  10. 10 Topic 9: The Station Report 7 min
  11. 11 Section Three — Open Water Dives 4 min
  12. 12 Dive 1 — Instrument and Observer Characterization 6 min
  13. 13 The Station Occupation Procedure 5 min
  14. 14 Dive 2 — The Reference Occupation 1 min
  15. 15 Dive 3 — Horizontal Survey Deployment 7 min
  16. 16 Dive 4 — The Repeat Occupation 4 min
  17. 17 Dive 5 — The Change Occupation 2 min
  18. 18 Dive 6 — Transferability 6 min
Start Reef Hydrocaster About the course

The record

Reef Chronicler

A dated record of one reef station: permanent photo points, forensic scales in the frame, and form, life, water and appearance filed side by side for whoever returns.

19 lessons · 27 min · from the Reef Chronicler Student Handbook, v0.04 · under development — published as it is written, and still changing

See lesson details
  1. 01 What This Course Is 2 min
  2. 02 The Idea You Should Carry Out of Here 2 min
  3. 03 What You Will Produce 1 min
  4. 04 The references in the frame 1 min
  5. 05 Nothing Is Measured in the Water 1 min
  6. 06 You will not know if a frame is good until later 1 min
  7. 07 Scoring the Frame 2 min
  8. 08 Condition 3 min
  9. 09 Area affected, not colonies affected 1 min
  10. 10 Flags, not diagnoses 1 min
  11. 11 Dive 1 — Occupy 1 min
  12. 12 Dive 2 — Capture 1 min
  13. 13 Dive 3 — Prove the record 1 min
  14. 14 Dive 4 — Found a station 1 min
  15. 15 Auditing a Record You Inherited 2 min
  16. 16 The Return Visit 2 min
  17. 17 Reporting Rules That Are Easiest to Break 2 min
  18. 18 Safety 1 min
  19. 19 What You Leave With 1 min
Start Reef Chronicler About the course

Not published as lessons

The course without lessons

1 of the 5 is not published here — its material is a page of rules better learned by playing it. The specialties page has the state of each.

See all 5 courses Physics tools