Recreational course · PADI
Advanced Open Water Diver
Five specialty dives, with deep and navigation compulsory. The limit moves out to 30 metres.
- Depth
- 30 m
- Format
- 5 specialty dives
- Prerequisites
- Open Water Diver
- Agency
- PADI
The name misleads — “advanced” does not mean the course is hard. It means you stop drilling skills and start diving in varied conditions, learning under an instructor what those conditions imply.
The two compulsory dives
Deep — you go below eighteen metres and find out first-hand what nitrogen narcosis does to you. You learn to plan a dive around a no-decompression limit that has stopped being theoretical.
Navigation — compass, distance estimation, natural reference points. After this dive you stop surfacing to check where you are.
Three of your choosing
Night, wreck, peak performance buoyancy, dry suit, nitrox, search and recovery, drift diving.
After the course
Certification to 30 metres, and the road open to Rescue Diver — a course that changes more than this one.