The PADI Advanced Open Water Certification.


The following is a quite detailed explanation of the PADI Advanced Open Water course content and will take some time to get through.

So, (as before), I suggest you grab a coffee and read on...

Pre-Dive

As a certified diver, you've already discovered that diving is more than just getting wet! It is a vehicle to a wide range of activities and interrelated skills that create adventure, fun and recreation for people with a wide range of interests.

You may have a growing interest in underwater photography which is becoming very popular these days - maybe a desire to explore new shipwrecks or just dive that little bit deeper...

There are many advantages to the PADI Advanced course some being:

  • It will afford you 5 more dives under the direct supervision of a PADI professional instructor to further hone your skills.
  • You'll have the opportunity to experience some of the more demanding underwater activities such as photography, drift dives, wrecks or night dives.
  • It will provide you a further license enabling you to dive that much deeper (to a maximum of 40 meters) exposing you to many more dive sites that the professional scuba diving shops/centers would not have allowed you to explore as an Open Water Diver - they would have been too deep for your earlier level of experience.


The PADI advanced course is conducted over a 2 day period giving you approximately 15 hours of supervision and 5 dives in total. You'll be exposed to 2 "core" dives, specifically:

  • A navigation dive
  • A deep dive (maximum of 40 meters)

And then you get to chose from a list of "elective" dives so choose 3 of your favorite dives from the following (typical) list:

  • Boat Dive
  • Drift Dive
  • Dry Suit Dive
  • Diver Propulsion Vehicle Dive
  • Multilevel Dive
  • Night Dive
  • Peak Performance Buoyancy Dive
  • Search and Recovery Dive
  • Nitrox Dive
  • Underwater Naturalist Dive
  • Underwater Videography Dive
  • Underwater Photography Dive
  • Underwater Navigation Dive
  • AWARE Fish Identification Dive
  • Wreck Dive

There may be more specialty (elective) dives to choose from as new ones are added periodically. So discuss what's currently on offer with your dive centre.

Pre-requisites:

In order to become a PADI Advanced diver you need to be 15 years old (or 12 for the Junior Advanced Diver course), and a certified Open Water Diver.

Many people take the PADI Advanced course back to back with the Open Water course these days, but once an Open Water Diver you can in fact take it at any time to suit you.

Advanced Open Water Course Structure:

First off you'll take the predetermined Navigation and Deep dives that are the "core" dives of the course. These are two essential skills to become familiar with.

The Importance of Under Water Navigation:

There are 5 distinct reasons why developing and practicing under water navigation skills will make your dives safer and more enjoyable:

Reduces Anxiety and Stress:

Disorientation creates anxiety because you don't know whether you're swimming toward or away from the boat or shore, or which way to head if you decide to discontinue the dive. If there are areas that you wish to avoid you may experience anxiety because you do not know where you are relative to them. The ability to navigate eliminates this stress because you will always know where you are, which way to go and how far it is to the boat or shore.

Avoids long surface swims:

If you are not good at underwater navigation and your dive objective is some distance from the boat or shore, the only way to reach it without losing your way is to swim on the surface and then descend. Likewise if you are disorientated during a dive, when you run low on air you have no alternative but to ascend where you are and swim back on the surface. Not only are surface swims more tiring and less interesting than swimming under water, but in some areas where there is high boat traffic, they may be more hazardous.

Increases the effectiveness of a dive plan:

Navigation helps make a dive plan effective because it eliminates guesswork in the time and air you'll use reaching your objective and returning. For example, if you and your buddy decide to head for a specific coral patch on a reef, you'll not waste valuable time, energy and air trying to locate it.

Avoids Buddy separation:

When you and your buddy plan a dive, your navigation skills will take you together along the same path to an agreed destination, minimizing the likelihood that you'll be separated from one another.

Conserves air:

The previous benefits of navigation all help you to conserve air. You'll breathe slower when you're relaxed instead of disoriented and anxious.

There is another good reason - avoidance of embarrassment! If as a diver you mention that you know where something is - it can be awfully embarrassing and annoying if you lose your way. You'll spend the entire dive wishing that you had never opened your mouth! :-)

Your instructor will familiarise you with a compass and set some tasks for you to complete under his direct supervision. The distance that you swim will be determined by the conditions and the visibility. You'll be set some reference points and then asked to retrace your steps using both the compass and natural navigation techniques learn't from the instructor. This is an extremely informative and educational dive.

The Deep Dive

Under the direct supervision of your instructor you shall embark upon probably the deepest dive of your diving experience down to a maximum of 40 meters. We do not tend to make deep dives just to go 'deep' - there is nearly always a specific objective in mind and if there isn't there should be! Deeper dives are costly in terms of air consumtion. Deep diving gives you access to new dive sites that fall below the (Open Water) 18 meter depth limit, and allows you to participate in specific diving activities in new ways. For example, diving deeper you can observe aquatic life that does not exist at shallower depths. Deep diving makes it possible to visit ship wrecks resting in deeper water, and it provides opportunties for under water photographs that you cannot take in shallow regions. In some places, deep diving makes it possible to drift effortlessly past deep water reefs and in other areas you'll be able to collect or recover objects that were lost at greater depths.

To many people, choosing a depth to define "deep" is rather like choosing an altitude to define "high". It's all relative. 18 metres might be high compared to standing on the ground but compared to the height of which a plane flies it is low.

For recreational diving purposes 30 meters is considered quite deep. The Advanced core dive to 40 meters is very educational in the way that your are made aware of key safety parameters and associated points of observation (physical reactions etc). You will learn the relationship between diving to greater depths and air consumption. The effects and hazards of Nitrogen Narcosis (not inherently dangerous if you know what to look for and how to control it) and the risks of decompression illness and how to avoid it, as well as the need for safety stops.

Your instructor will likely have you perform certain tasks on the surface whilst timing how long you need to complete them. Then having reached your maximum planned depth he will have you complete similar 'equivalent' tests, again whilst timing you. You will likely have some surprises that you had not expected! You will have the opportunity to compare gauges and computers with the gauges of others whilst at depth. The difference between gauges and also between Analogue and Digital can be quite an eye opener - and you'll be all the more prepared in future having gained the experience.

Elective Dives
Moving away from the core dives you get to choose 3 "elective" dives from a list to wet your appetite for that area of diving. The most popular are wreck, night, drift and photography but all are open to be explored and all are enough to allow you the opportunity of a 'taster' to see if you would like to pursue this specific diving activity later on. So, enjoy your course in the knowledge you will learning valuable skills aimed at helping you become a more confident and above all, safer diver.