Advanced Open Water

Underwater navigation is learning how to find you way around the dive site and most importantly, back to the boat at the end of the dive! Finding the boat should not be about luck, it should be about planning and navigating the site. During this you learn navigation patterns, underwater navigation (with and without a compass), map marking and how to estimate distance underwater. This can lead to often humorous results during training.

Digital underwater photography will help you get better pictures, capturing your favourite diving memories. This is one of the most popular specialities and is good to combine with peak performance buoyancy, which is really essential for getting great photos. Learn about photo composition, lighting and more.

Peak performance buoyancy will help you be more comfortable in the water. The objective of this is to achieve neutral buoyancy, which means you neither sink nor float, but move comfortably through the water. The benefits of this, firstly you use less air (you are not always inflating and deflating your BCD to be comfortable) and secondly, you can easily hover in place, which is great for photos and interacting with / observing the underwater world.

Wreck diving is not a skill you will get to practise on Cairns’ Great Barrier Reef, as we have no wrecks in our immediate vicinity. However, one of the best wreck dives on the planet, the Undara, is a 4 hour drive south of Cairns and well worth a visit. What you learn with this training is how to explore shipwrecks and avoid common hazards, consideration and equipment when entering a wreck and planning your wreck dive.

Search and recovery diving is a great skill to have, especially if you have dropped your underwater camera! What do you learn? Amongst other things, you learn about dive planning, search and recovery techniques and potential problems, how to locate objects using search patterns, limited visibility search techniques and various recovery methods. You never know what treasure you may find!

The underwater naturalist course teaches you to have a greater appreciation and understanding of what you are looking at during your dive. Not only will you learn the names of different fish and marine life, but you’ll be taught about the relationships between various creatures of the underwater world. Learn about predator / prey relationships and how to enjoy responsible interactions with aquatic life.

Cairns Great Barrier Reef vs Ribbon Reef & Coral Sea Trips

Advanced dive courses in Cairns can be completed on the Outer Great Barrier Reef or the far northern Ribbon Reefs, or even on the remote Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea. All advanced dive courses are completed on liveaboard trips, allowing you to enjoy maximum dive time, once you have completed your core training modules.

What’s the difference? Cairns’ Outer Great Barrier Reef has relatively sheltered water with not much current, making it a great place to practise peak buoyancy control. The maximum dive depth is generally 30m and deep dives are completed around the 28m mark. Travel time to and from the reef is around 2hours and this is generally, a cheaper option than booking a Ribbon Reef or Coral Sea trip, with advanced dive course component. When not with your instructor, explore the Outer Great Barrier Reef and its marine life.