The Adventures in Diving program offers both the Adventure Diver and Advanced Open Water Diver certifications. If you complete any three adventure dives, you can earn your PADI Adventure Diver certification. If you complete your deep adventure dive, underwater navigation adventure dive and three adventure dives for a total of five, you can earn your Advanced Open Water Diver certification.

Do not be confused by the word "advanced". This course is designed as a confidence builder to the newly certified diver, introducing them to different types of diving. There are no quizzes or written tests. Practical skills learnt during the Open Water course like mask removal are not required for assessment on this course.

Why Advanced Open Water Diver?
After your five dives, you'll be more experienced, feel more comfortable in the water and simply enjoy diving more because you'll better understand the underwater environment.

What do I need to start?
Minimum age for this course is 12 years old, with restrictions for participants under 15 years. You must either hold the PADI Open Water certification or have an equivalent certification with another diving organisation. If you haven't dived for some time a Scuba Review is highly recommended. Divers aged between 12 and 15 receive the Junior Advanced, which can be upgraded upon reaching 15 years of age.

What will I do?
The Advanced Open Water course introduces you to five specialty diving activities, known as adventure dives, under instructor supervision. You are required to complete two core dives - a deep dive and navigation dive.

The other three adventure dives are selected by the student and instructor according to location and environmental conditions.

Adventure Dives (Core)

• Underwater Navigation - Did you ever wonder how your instructor managed to find their way around underwater? This dive introduces you to essential navigation techniques, using both the compass and natural features. This dive is great fun, but is just an introduction; you can learn a lot more in the Navigation specialty.
• Deep Dive - Everybody asks "how deep can you go?" You already know that an Open Water diver you may go to 18 meters. In the Advanced Open Water course you are taken to a maximum of 30 meters depending on the location and conditions. Your recommended depth limit after completing the advanced course is 30 metres, or 40 meters after completing the deep speciality course.

Adventure Dives (Elective)

• Dry Suit Diver - Would you like to dive deeper and longer in cold water environments? A dry suit is the logical choice for divers who wish to dive regularly in cold water.
• Drift Diver - Imagine drifting effortlessly in the current past a wall. Just lie back and enjoy the view.
• Night Diver - Completely different to diving during daylight hours. At night the dive site takes on a different atmosphere as different creatures appear.
• Search and Recovery Diver - Learn how to locate lost objects and recover them safely.
• Peak Performance Buoyancy - Learn better buoyancy techniques. Excellent practice if you haven't dived for a while.
• Underwater Naturalist Diver - You'll learn to identify several species of animals, invertebrates and plants in your local environment.
• Wreck Diver - This is always a favourite. Learn techniques to safely explore shipwrecks.
• Multilevel Diver - We all want to spend longer underwater. Learning how to use the PADI wheel gives you much more flexibility. We look more into underwater computers on this one too.
• Underwater Photographer - This is a lot of fun. You are let loose with an underwater camera!
• Altitude Diver - Diving at higher altitudes requires special procedures. You'll learn how to safely dive in mountain lakes.

More adventure dives available on request. To see more detail about any of the above adventure dives, consult the relevant specialty course for more information.

What is included?
Air refills, certification card and course materials. Equipment is not included. If you do not own your own set of equipment, we recommend that you buy, rent or borrow it.

How long does the Advanced Open Water course take?
This course is run over two days, normally over a weekend. A sample schedule might be as follows:
Friday evening: theory, knowledge reviews and specific details, followed by the night dive. Saturday: dry suit dive and navigation (possibly also night dive). Sunday: deep dive (approximately 30 metres) and search and recovery

Is there any theory in this course?
Prior to the course, students will receive the Adventures in Diving manual. This contains information covering many areas of specialty diving such as deep diving, night diving, underwater photography and much more. You are required to read and complete the knowledge reviews in the relevant chapters for your core and elective dives. There are no written tests in this course

What if I don't have time to complete all five dives?
The Adventure Diver course is a shortened version the standard Advanced Open Water course. You complete any three dives - usually in one day. These three dives will also count towards your full Advanced Open Water certification at a later time.

Where do I go from here?
At the instructors discretion each dive counts towards the relevant specialty course. This reduces the cost of completing the specialties at a later time. If you later complete five specialty courses and the Rescue Diver you will then qualify for the Master Scuba Diver rating. This is the highest non-professional rating in scuba diving.
Most divers continue their education after the advanced with the Rescue Diver certification, or enrol in speciality courses.