The PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course is all about open water diving and developing the skills you learnt on your entry level scuba course. There are no more pool skills and no exams to take, simply fun open water dives learning new skills and increasing your confidence and experience through five additional instructor-led open water dives.

The Advanced Open Water Diver course helps you increase your confidence and build your scuba skills so you can become more comfortable in the water. This is a great way to get more dives under your belt while continuing to learn under the supervision of your PADI Instructor.

What You Will Learn

The knowledge and skills you get in the Advanced Open Water Diver course vary with your interest and the adventures you have, but include:

• Practical aspects of deep diving
• Physiological effects of deeper scuba diving
• More ways to use your underwater compass
• How to navigate using kick-cycles, visual landmarks and time
• How to better use your dive computer to plan and execute dives
• And much, much more, depending on the Adventure Dives you choose

The Fun Part

One reason you’ll love the Advanced Open Water Diver course is that you and your instructor choose from a variety of Adventure Dives to complete your course. You can try your hand at wreck diving, drift diving, night diving, peak performance buoyancy dives and many more. Recent additions to the Advanced Open Water course also include Digital Underwater Imaging using photography and videography to record memories of your dives, the Delayed Surface Marker Buoy dive and the Self-Reliant Diver Adventure dive.

Each Adventure Dive in the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course may also credit toward the first dive of the corresponding PADI Specialty Diver course. If you’re aiming for the Master Scuba Diver rating this can really help you in that journey!

Prerequisites

To take this course, you must be:

• A PADI Open Water Diver, or equivalent
• 15 years old (12 for Junior Advanced Open Water Diver)
• Aged 10 or 11? You can earn the Junior Adventure Diver rating instead
• Complete a Diver Medical Form, which can be viewed here, and may need signing by a physician depending on your medical history. Please check this prior to booking your course
• There may be additional prerequisites depending on the Adventure Dives you choose

The Learning Materials You Need

You can complete your course theory using the PADI eLearning for Advanced Open Water, or the Advanced Open Water course pack. Both of these manuals include information about all the adventure dives for your course, plus many more too. It's an excellent resource to add to your own dive library.

Your Next Adventure

Building up your dive experience is exactly what the Advanced Open Water Diver course is all about! Once you've earned this rating, your next step is all about going diving. Join us on club trips around the UK and abroad, and make use of your skills. You can also earn more speciality ratings in the diving subjects that interest you most, and when you're ready, consider becoming a better dive buddy through the PADI Rescue Diver course.