FAQ: Why should I take my Advanced Diver course?

Why Advanced Diver certification is important?

Many divers wonder why they should become Advanced Diver. Some prefer to continue their lives as Open Water Divers, making dives without acquiring new skills, or bypassing the advice of other instructors. Here we will discuss some of the reasons why you should do your advanced certification:

• Broad depth of your dive to 30 meters. While the depth should never be the goal of any diver, there are certain dive profiles as OWD you cannot perform. Imagine there is a sunken ship, a cave or something interesting to visit below 18 meters. Without your advanced certification, the divers group would be split and you would have to stay in a different depth with at least one of your classmates.
• You learn how to better orient yourself underwater: while you will not be an expert in underwater navigation, you’re going to acquire some additional skills that allow you to further develop your sense of direction on each dive. You will learn the importance of natural navigation, current, sun, and to properly use a compass, a basic tool for any diver who saves many problems under water.
• Improvements your buoyancy: Most of diving centers always recommend this adventure to improve buoyancy control. During the dive your instructor and you will spend some times doing exercises that will help you become more aware of the position you occupy in the water, when to inflate and deflate your BCD, to be completely horizontally to avoid damaging the fragile aquatic life. The buoyancy control is one of the most important skills for any diver. It also comes with experience, but with only one dive like this you will improve it more effectively in less time.
• You will be qualified to perform other dives as OWD you could never do. Night, wreck, drift, cavern diving… They’re all missions for advanced divers!

Wreck dive

What do I need to become an Advanced Diver?

First you need as Advanced Diver is to get your study manuals, the PADI Adventure in Diving, which is a catalog of all adventure dives that can be done with this organization. An adventure dive is a dive profile which, by their nature, OWD cannot perform.

Each chapter of the book is a different adventure diving. A diver can make as many as the want, as long as you read the chapter, complete the review of knowledge and skills to make the dive with an instructor. Once a diver gathers 3 adventure dives becomes an Adventure Diver. When they gather 5 and two of them are deep diving and underwater navigation, they become advanced diver and receives a new certification that allow them to dive until 30 meters deep.

Each adventure dives containing Adventure in Diving manual is the first of the specialty courses dives. Upon completion of any specialty course, the diver becomes specialist on that adventure. For example, a Deep Diver Specialist is allowed to dive until 40 meters deep. To learn more about the specialty courses, read our article on this topic.