PADI Advanced Open Water Course

Start your continuing diving education today with the friendly and professional PADI diving instructors of Diving Adelaide!

Continuing your education by taking the Diving Adelaide Advanced Course will improve your diving skills by completing 5 adventure dives an instructor. On each of these dives we will further develop each of those “specialty skills” so you become a better, safer and more comfortable diver. The advanced course will prepare you to safely and confidently dive at night, find your way underwater, perfect your buoyancy, plan your dive and dive your plan at multiple levels using a dive computer and to dive down to depths of 30 metres!

The five adventure dives that you will complete are the following:

Dive 1: Peak Performance Buoyancy. During this buoyancy workshop you will do different buoyancy exercises and your instructor will try to take as many weights of your weight belt as possible. Remember, the less weights you have on your weight belt, the less energy diving will cost which results in a lower overall air consumption and you becoming a better more relaxed diver.

Dive 2: Navigation. One of the most important underwater skills (and one that you will certainly enjoy a lot) is being able to find your way back to the entry/exit point without having to surface. This is obviously a very important skill for those divers who want to go diving with their buddy but without a dive professional to follow around! You will practice all of these techniques on your dive. During the navigation workshop you will learn to dive different patterns (such as a square pattern) and to use natural and manmade references (such as a reef, a jetty or a sloping bottom) to pinpoint your location underwater and find your way accordingly so you get the longest bottom time and have a more enjoyable dive.

Dive 3: U/W Naturalist. Learn more about underwater ecology, the symbiosis between different animals (or plants and animals) and the natural habitat of many of our local creatures. Notice how sea creatures behave and find critters you may have previously missed. Our experienced instructors will help you take a closer look at our stunning local marine life, while bringing into practice your navigation skills and buoyancy practice from the previous two course dives.

Dive 4: Deep. The deep dive is for many people one of the most exciting dives of the course. On this dive you will be introduced to a phenomenon called nitrogen narcosis. We go to a depth between 25 and 30 metres (if weather permits we go to the Stanvac Barges for a 29m dive!) and will show you what great depths like that can do to you, your mind and your body. Remember that the deeper you go, the more air you will use and the less colours you will see (at 30 metres everything will seem very blue – until you switch on a dive light!). Being certified as an Open Water Diver, you already had access to about 50% of all dive sites around the world. Doing this dive will open up another 40% of all dive sites worldwide (you will need to do specialised deep dive or technical training to open up the last 10%!).

Dive 5: Wreck. Even though it’s important to know how to use a basic dive table, nowadays most divers use a computer to plan, monitor and log their dives. Using a computer will allow you to have longer bottom times than when planned with the conventional dive table. Especially now that we can dive to depths of 30 metres, it is important to monitor our gauges, because of the limited time that we can spend at these depths. When doing more than one dive a day (and especially when deep diving), it is important to keep track of your no decompression limits. The most effective and enjoyable way of keeping track of these limits is by using a multi-level tool or your dive computer (and it will tell you a whole lot of other information that’s good to know before, during or after the dive too!). The most convenient place for a multilevel dive is a wreck, so on this dive we explore one of the many wrecks that SA has to offer!

Optional: Night. You wouldn’t believe how different a dive site looks at night, unless you would see it with your own eyes! At night all the crabs, shrimps and octopus come out of their crevices and there is an explosion of life on the reef. As night diving is not for everybody, the night dive is an optional add-on to your advanced course. We usually go night diving on Wednesday nights. We run regular night dives for free for all ex-students (apart from any rental gear needs) – simply keep an eye out for our newsletter after the course for any upcoming social and night dives!

Optional: Enriched Air Nitrox (full certification). You may have heard about diving on enriched air and wondered what it means and why you would like to do it. Having enriched air in your cylinder, means that you’re diving with air with a higher percentage of oxygen than normal air (the air we normally breathe consists roughly of 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. A common enriched air mix consists of 32% oxygen and 68% nitrogen). The reduced amount of nitrogen means that your body does not absorb as much nitrogen during a dive as it normally would, which means that you can have longer dives (because of higher no decompression limits) or have a safer dive with a lower risk of decompression illness (because you have less nitrogen in your body that needs to come out of solution on your ascend). The nitrox theory course can be added to the advanced course for only $139.

Each of these dives gives you a taste of the respective specialty course and will count towards getting your full specialty certification. For example, if you are really excited about deep diving and would like to become a Deep Diving Specialist, you can sign up for your Deep Diving Specialty Course. Normally, you need to do 4 dives to complete this specialty, but when you complete your advanced course, you will have already done the first training dive of the deep diving specialty course during your advanced course. So now you only have 3 more training dives left to do to complete the Deep Diving Specialty Course, which means you will save both time and money!

Standard Course Schedule

The Advanced Course schedule in short:

• Home study (4 – 8 hours): Advanced Open Water Diver Course E-learning (Theory)

• Wednesday night 6:00PM – 7:30PM: Theory Night & Gear Sizing
• Saturday 9:00AM – 5:00PM: Ocean Dives (Shore) 1, 2 and 3: Peak Performance Buoyancy, Navigation and U/W Naturalist
• Sunday 9:00AM – 2:00PM: Ocean Dives (Boat) 4 and 5: Deep and Wreck + Dive Logging

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• Weekday night 6:00PM – 9:00PM: Optional Nitrox Theory Course – add $139
• Weekday night 6:00PM – 9:00PM: Optional Ocean Dive 6: Night

What you need to know before you start the course:

• To participate in this course, you have to be certified as an Open Water Diver.
• The course is designed in a way that you can take it straight after your Open Water Diver Course. There is no additional experience required.
• All equipment is included in the course (Buoyancy vest, regulators, gauges, filled cylinders, weight belts plus weights, wetsuit, mask, snorkel and fins)
• To participate in this course, you have to complete 4-8 hours of online theory
• Besides the theory, you have to fill out a medical questionnaire before you start the course to check whether you are fit to dive (see below for more information)
• A minimum age of 14 years applies. Every student under the age of 18 needs to have a parent or a guardian sign a consent form (available from the dive centre). Students younger than 15 years old will attain a Junior Advanced certification.

Start right now! Subscribe for e-Learning!

Where some dive schools still choose to teach the theory side of the learn to dive course in a traditional classroom setting, Diving Adelaide has chosen for the faster, cost-effective way of teaching the theory via online training. To us, the advantages of e-learning are clear:

• E-learning provides a single experience that accommodates the three distinct styles of auditory learners, visual learners and kinaesthetic learners, allowing for more efficient training.

• E-learning is self-paced. Advanced learners are allowed to speed through the theory, while others slow their own progress through content, eliminating frustration with themselves, their fellow learners and the course.

• E-learning has on-demand availability, which allows the student to complete the training conveniently at off-hours or from home (as a student you can log on and off to do parts of the theory as many times as you want) and doesn’t require the student to travel to training location.

• E-learning reduces the overall cost of the Open Water Diver Course for the dive centre, allowing us to lower the price of our “learn to dive” courses to an affordable level.

• E-Learning reduces the learning time on average by 40% to 60%, which means the overall time that you will be spending on the theory will most likely be only half of the time you would have spent in a classroom setting.

Please make sure that you fill out our online Dive Medical Questionnaire before the course, which will tell you whether you are fit to dive or whether you need to get a dive medical done by a diving doctor. If you need to see a doctor, please make sure that you do so before the course on Tuesday as we do not provide refunds for a failed medical after you have attended the Tuesday night session.

Also please make sure that you schedule enough time to complete your online training, as it takes approximately 8 to 10 hours to complete and please make sure that you select the right training for this course (Advanced Open Water Diver Course)! 

If that hasn’t convinced you yet, swing by Diving Adelaide for a chat and to have a look around. We’ll happily show you around at the dive centre and walk you through our large classroom, top notch school dive gear and our showroom with globally competitive gear pricing!

Wednesday Night 6:00PM – 7:30PM: Classroom Session

We meet at the dive centre on Wednesday evening at 6PM for a classroom session, where we will meet the team, discuss any questions and go through gear sizing for any rental gear requirements for the course.

Things to bring:

• Open Water Diver Certification Card
• PADI Advanced Open Water Course eLearning Results

Saturday 9:00AM – 5:00PM Ocean Dives 1, 2 and 3

We meet either at the dive centre or at the dive site where we will be doing our three (shore) ocean dives of the day.

Things to bring:

• Swimmers and a Towel
• Lunch and Water
• Sunscreen
• All Personal Dive Gear (none required for this course as all rental gear is included)

Sunday 9:00AM – 2:00PM: Ocean Dives 4 and 5 + Paperwork/Logbook

We meet at the boat ramp on Sunday morning at 9AM, from where the boat will take us out to the dive sites where we will be doing our deep and wreck dives. After the dives we head back to the dive centre to fill out the paperwork and log our dives.

Things to bring:

• Logbook
• Swimmers and a Towel
• Lunch and Water
• Sunscreen
• All Personal Dive Gear (none required for this course as all rental gear is included)
• Anti-Sea Sickness Medication (only in case you are prone to sea sickness)