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Reef Cartographer · Learn

Learn it. For free. Whether or not you ever take the course.

The complete Student Handbook as 10 lessons — about 60 minutes of reading — with worked examples and a self-check at the end of every module. Work through all of it and you arrive at the course ready to dive it, not ready to be lectured at.

Anyone can learn this. Only an instructor can certify you. Everything here is open — read it because you are taking the course, because you want to know how a reef gets mapped, or because you intend to run the method yourself. Nothing is graded, recorded, or sent anywhere.

What a certification card attests is not that someone read something. It is that an instructor watched them do the work in water and judged them competent. That part cannot happen on a website. Taking the specialty itself means instruction, in-water time and PADI's certification fee, arranged through a dive center in the ordinary way — the reading is free, the card is not.

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  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
Start with lesson one Mapping calculators

Reference

Not part of the lesson sequence — the worksheet, the card you take to the boat, the glossary, and where to read further. Here when you want them.

Want the card? The in-water work — the sonar lanes, the photogrammetry passes, the registration, and a map you actually made — is what earns the certification. If you have worked through these lessons and want to do it properly, get in touch.

Generated from the Reef Cartographer Student Handbook, revision 05.008, by Kamran Razvan and Scott Schreier. The handbook is the authority; if the two ever disagree, the handbook is right.