Whether you’ve never made a boat dive or you’ve logged dozens, the PADI Boat Diver Specialty course can benefit almost every diver because different boats in different parts of the world do things differently.

Diving from a boat is fun, especially when you look at ease when maneuvering around on it. It’s fun to know what you’re doing.

Learn the tips, tricks and ways to

1. •Dive from boats ranging from small inflatables to giant live-aboards
2. •how they differ from place to place
3. •gain experience and training from diving on boats in your local area
4. •Safely enter and exit the water; sometimes it’s better to hand your gear up to the crew and then climb in the boat and sometimes you just take off your fins and weights and walk up the ladder
5. •Stow your gear in the most appropriate areas
6. •Use surface lines to initiate or conclude your dives.
7. •Locate basic boat safety equipment 

You can do many types of dives from a boat and gaining this certification is another step toward the coveted MASTER SCUBA DIVER rating

Wanna stay warm and toasty on a dive?

Then dive dry.

Yes! Unlike a wetsuit, a dry suit seals you off from the outside water and that keeps you warm! Even in surprisingly cold water.

Dry suits let you dive more challenging dive sites, and extend your dive season. When you have the right cold water scuba diving attire, you can stand up to the elements and take advantage of the generally better visibility offered by winter months—especially at inland dive sites such as quarries, lakes, sinkholes and caves etc.

As a dry suit diver, you’re equipped to scuba dive some of the world’s incredible dive sites in the world’s cooler regions that are best enjoyed in a dry suit even in their warmer months.

Gain the knowledge and skills to safely don, dive with, doff and store a dry-suit. Get introduced to the different types of suits so you can make a very informed decision if considering purchasing a dry suit.

You will learn:

1. •Dry suit buoyancy control skills
2. •Dry suit maintenance, storage and basic repair
3. •Undergarment (fleece or overall-type garments worn under the dry suit) options

Scuba diving with a dry suit is useful when diving many types of dive sites.

Many technical divers wear dry suits on almost every dive due to the length of the time spent underwater. The longer the diver is in the water, the more thermal protection is required. If technical diving is something that interests you, check out the Discover Tec Diving experience.

 

DPVs offer a thrilling way to see a lot of underwater territory in a brief amount of time. They scoot you through the water without kicking.

Whether making a shore dive or diving from a boat, a DPV is a great way to see more and have a blast doing it.

Fun? Underwater scooters (DPVs) are a kick! It’s all fun.

You learn:

DPVs can come in handy when wreck diving because they let you tour more of the wreck, plus reduce your air consumption.

You may want to consider the PADI Wreck Diver course while working your way to Master Scuba Diver.

 

As the sun sets, you don your dive gear, slip on your scuba mask and bite down on your dive regulator. A deep breath and you step off the boat – into the underwater night.

Although you’ve seen this reef many times before, this time you drop into a whole new world and watch it come to life under the glow of your dive light.

Introduce yourself to the whole new cast of critters that comes out after the sun goes down. See your favorite dive sites from a whole new perspective at night

You Learn

1. •Night dive planning, organization, procedures, techniques and potential problems
2. •How to control your buoyancy at night
3. •Entries, exits and underwater navigation at night
4. •Nocturnal aquatic life, since many of the plants and animals you'll see are different

For your next adventure, take your navigation skills to new levels with the PADI Underwater Navigator course. Get your buoyancy dialed in with the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy course. Recognize what those critters are on your night dive with the AWARE Fish Identification course

 

What is neutral buoyancy?

Scuba divers like to be neutrally buoyant so they neither sink nor float. It can be a tricky thing. Divers who’ve mastered the highest performance levels in buoyancy stand apart. You’ve seen them underwater. They glide effortlessly, use less air and ascend, descend or hover, almost as if by thought. They interact gently with aquatic life and affect their surroundings minimally.

The PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy course refines the basic skills you learned as a PADI Open Water Diver and elevates them to the next level.

The fun part of this course is giving your dive skills a polish you may not have thought possible and you learn

1. •How to trim your scuba gear so you’re perfectly balanced in the water
2. •Nuances in determining weight so you’re not too light nor too heavy by even a slight degree
3. •How to streamline to save air and move smoothly through the water
4. •How to hover effortlessly in both a vertical position and a horizontal position

Once you have mastered your buoyancy, why not try your hand at wreck diving, where buoyancy is important to keep off those hazards you could find on the wrecks. Also Underwater digital Photography is a great specialty to do where buoyancy control is required and practiced.

 

The underwater world needs heroes. You can be one of them by championing the causes of the world’s most fragile and important aquatic ecosystems. You can make a difference!

Learn about some of the most pressing problems facing these vulnerable environments and everyday actions you can take to help conserve them. It’s informative, interesting and most importantly, you learn how to make a difference.

Project AWARE Foundation is the scuba diving industry’s leading nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to conserving the aquatic environment through education, advocacy and action.

Besides completing the Project AWARE Specialty course, you can become a partner in the efforts to preserve the underwater environment.

You learn about:

1. •The ocean commons and coastal zone issues
2. •Fisheries challenges and sustainability
3. •Coral environment overview and inhabitants
4. •The role of the scuba diver in protecting aquatic environments

If you are interested in becoming an underwater conservationist, you’ll also enjoy these specialty courses:

1. AWARE Fish Identification
2. Underwater Naturalist
3. Peak Performance Buoyancy
4. Digital Underwater Photography and
5. Underwater Videographer

 

Have you ever dropped something in the water?

Are you looking for lost “treasure”?

The PADI Search and Recovery Diver Specialty course will teach you effective ways to find objects underwater and bring them to the surface.

Small, large or just awkward, there is a way to bring them up.

You will find lost items and lift them to the surface. It’s fun to use the lift bag. Not only are these skills fun, but very practical and ultimately useful because eventually, you’ll lose something in the water. As a Search and Recovery Diver, you’ll know how to search for and recover it.

You will practice

1. •Search and recovery dive planning, organization, procedures, techniques and how to deal with potential problems
2. •How to locate large and small objects using search patterns
3. •How to use a lift bag and other recovery methods
4. •Limited visibility search techniques

Because you often need to navigate to specific spots to find lost items, the Underwater Navigator course can help you perfect your navigation skills.

 

Look closer to see more on your next dive. Look for symbioses, predator/prey and other relationships between aquatic plant and animal life.

Learn not just what fish and animals are, but how they interact with each other and the environment, about why some creatures behave the way they do and what their role is in the aquatic ecosystem.

You will see that

1. •The major aquatic life groupings, interactions and factual information that dispels negative myths.
2. •The role of aquatic plants, food chains and predator prey relationships
3. •Responsible interactions with aquatic life
4. •The underwater naturalist’s view of organisms and their roles in the environment

You put this information into practice during your two open water dives.

If you are interested in becoming an underwater conservationist or documenting what you encounter, you’ll also enjoy these specialty courses:

1. AWARE Fish Identification
2. Project AWARE Specialist
3. Peak Performance Buoyancy
4. Digital Underwater Photography
5. Underwater Videographer

Other than taking someone diving, there’s only one way to show someone the sounds, motion and dynamics of the underwater world: video.

Show your scuba vacation adventures to your friends and family. Use your editing skills to share your clips with the world through YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and more.

Use your underwater videos to turn more of your friends into dive buddies.

The PADI Underwater Videographer Specialty course shows you how to create videos that are interesting, entertaining and worth watching again and again by

1. •Selecting, maintaining and caring for your underwater video equipment
2. •Videography fundamentals, such as · exposure · focus · shot types · moves · story line · shot sequencing.
3. •The post-dive editing process where you take your raw footage and create an underwater masterpiece.

By the time you complete the course, you’ll have gone through the entire basic video production process

Part of the secret to getting good video is having great buoyancy skills to capture the footage you’re seeking. The Peak Performance Buoyancy course can help you fine tune your skills.

Also, some of the tips and skills you learn from underwater videography can also help you take better underwater photos. Check out the Digital Underwater Photography course.