Advanced Open Water SCUBA Diver

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The Advanced Open Water SCUBA Diver course (AOWSD) is a continuing education certification course for OWSD certified divers. It is designed to enhance the divers' knowledge and skills, while at the same time, introduce divers to a variety of additional diving activities, to provide them with experience in these areas in a safe and controlled manner. Upon successful completion of this course, graduates are considered competent, confident, capable, and safe to engage in unsupervised open water diving activities to the maximum extent of recreational limitations (40m/132ft and within NDL's), provided those open water dives and the areas dived approximate those of training.

The PDC AOWSD course focuses strongly on improving a diver's skills in their weaker areas, fine-tuning their abilities, and making them better divers. This course includes advanced education in physics, biology, equipment, techniques, planning, safety, emergency procedures, and much more. When conducted locally, our AOWSD course will include: Advanced Navigation, Night / Low Visibility, Deep (40m max.), Search & Recovery, Light Salvage, and Boat and Wreck Dives (non-penetration), as a part of the course requirements.

This course is an 80 hour block of instruction program.

The minimum age for this course is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisites for this course are:

• OWSD certified.
• It is STRONGLY recommended that students have at least 25 logged dives, and have spent time practicing basic skills on each dive, before considering enrolling in this course. Including: neutral buoyancy, breathing, finning, navigation, dive planning, gas management, understanding dive science, use of equipment, etc.

The AOWSD course will cover more advanced topics on the science and application of SCUBA diving, and include hands-on skills development covering everything from rough water, limited visibility, planning and decision-making, advanced buoyancy control and finning techniques, leading dives, environmental considerations, self-rescue and buddy rescue, navigation, emergency procedures, communication, and much more.

If students do not yet have their own equipment, all students will be taught using a back-plate and wing BC with technical long-hose equipment setup. Students are encouraged to supply their own equipment provided their equipment meets safety requirements.

The AOWSD Course will require completion and successful passing of online academics, formal lectures, skin diving skills, equipment recovery, self-rescue skills, buddy-rescue skills, rescue of unconscious divers both underwater and on the surface, confined water SCUBA training, limited visibility, night diving, navigation, advanced buoyancy and finning, search and recovery, deep diving to 40m (132ft), light salvage, a boat and non-penetration wreck dive, and a minimum of 6 open water dives.

Course graduates will receive a lifetime internationally recognized Unrestricted Recreational Advanced Open Water SCUBA diving certification from the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), and will be prepared to conduct open-water dives in waters and conditions proximate to those encountered during training, to a maximum depth of 40m (132ft) within recreational limitations.