PADI Specialty courses are great way to learn new skills and techniques. They range from the ever popular Nitrox diver to Wreck, Drift, Dry Suit and Deep diver. The specialty courses are also vital steps towards your PADI Master Scuba Diver rating. Underwater Explorers specializes in PADI Specialty courses.
Enriched Air Nitrox Diver
Looking to extend your bottom time or shorten your surface intervals?
This is one of the most popular PADI specialties. Diving with nitrox lets you safely extend your no stop time beyond the no decompression limits for air. Diving with nitrox means more time underwater.
The course consists of 1/2 day academics and optional two training dives which can even be conducted as part of any ongoing PADI course. Check out more on this course by going to our detailed page PADI Nitrox and join the future of diving!!
Whether you’re into underwater photography or wreck diving, on vacation in some tropical paradise or just out for a leisurely day of diving at your local dive site, the PADI Enriched Air Diver course helps you get more out of diving by giving you more time underwater.
- Duration: 1 or 2 days, 2 dives (optional).
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Learn to analyze cylinder contents.
- Plan enriched air dives using tables and dive computers.
- Safely increase your no stop time.
SMB Diver
This is a must for UK Divers looking to dive off the coast from boats.
Successful completion of this course gives the participant full certification in the use and deployment of SMB’s and DSMB’s. The course includes an brief theory session followed by two sea dives. The course links brilliantly to PADI Drift Diver Specialty course which could be conducted on the second day.
- Duration: 1 day 2 dives
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Equipment overview, selection and maintenance
- Deployment, risks and hazards
Drift Diver
Want to travel underwater as if you were gliding, but without finning?
Discover the techniques, tools, and trick of safely planning and conducting drift dives. Develop on your abilities to use SMBs and reels. This One day specialty course takes you to two training dives in the sea.
- Duration: 1 day – 2 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Planning, organization, procedures, techniques, problems and hazards
- Drift diving equipment — floats, lines, reels
- Buoyancy-control, navigation and communication for drift diving
- Site selection and overview of aquatic currents – causes and effects
- Techniques for staying close to a buddy or together as a group
Wreck Diver
Want to explore sunken ships, crashed planes and lost treasures beneath the surface?
Then the PADI Wreck Diver programme is just want you want. To venture into PADI’s Wreck Diver program, you’ll need to be at least a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver or equivalent and be at least 15.
This is where you’ll put in to practice the information you gained from listening to your instructor and practicing, experiencing and conducting four wreck dives with him/her.
- Duration: 2 days – 4 dives.
- Prerequisite: Advanced Open Water Diver
- The planning, organization, procedures, techniques, problems and hazards of wreck diving.
- The preparation and use of lights, air supplies, special equipment, penetration lines and reels.
- Limited-visibility diving techniques and emergency procedures.
- Certification counts toward the PADI Master Scuba Diver rating.
Dry Suit Diver
Want to stay warm and toasty on a dive?
Unlike a wetsuit, a dry suit seals you off from the outside water. In the PADI Dry Suit Diver Specialty course, you’ll learn how to use a dry suit.
During the Dry Suit Diver program, you’ll go on one confined water dive and two open water dives, in addition to covering the knowledge and techniques of dry suit diving with emphasis placed on the use of dry suits — operation principles, care and diving techniques.
- Duration: 1.5 day – 2 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Don and doff techniques specific to your dry suit
- Dry suit buoyancy control skills
- Dry suit maintenance and storage
- Undergarment options
Deep Diver
A programme offers you the adventure of a lifetime – going deep to see things others only dream about.
To join the deep diving crowd, you’ll need your PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certification and be at least 15 years old.
The programme includes four open water dives, which are conducted over at least two days. The minimum depth for the deep dives is between 18 to 30 metres, with no dive exceeding 40 m.
Underwater Explorers strongly encourages students to do the PADI Enriched Air Nitrox Programme either prior to this course or as a part of it.
- Duration: 2 day – 4 dives.
- Prerequisite: Advanced Open Water Diver
- Planning, organization, procedures, techniques, problems and hazards.
- Risk factors and decompression-tables review.
- Safety stops and emergency decompression procedures.
- Special equipment, descent lines and buoyancy-control considerations.
Equipment Specialty
Want to learn more about how your equipment operates and learn valuable care techniques?
This course familiarizes you with the operation and maintenance of your dive equipment. The more you know about how your gear works, the more comfortable you are with it.
- Duration: 1 day.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Theory, principles and operation of dive equipment.
- Routine, recommended care and maintenance procedures, and equipment storage.
- Common problems with equipment and recommended professional maintenance procedures.
- Simple suggestions for comfortable equipment configurations and an introduction to new equipment. (Optional trying of new or unfamiliar equipment in confined water may be included.)
- No dives are required, so you can take the Equipment Specialist course any time of the year
- The PADI Equipment Specialist Course is not an equipment repair course, but it provides the foundation you’ll want if you’re interested in learning equipment repair
Boat Diver
Make diving easy – just take one giant step off the back and you’re in the water!
This course familiarizes you with the various ways you stow gear, enter and exit the water, use surface lines depending upon the type boat and the location.
- Duration: 1 day – 2 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Covers techniques for diving from boats ranging from small inflatables to giant live-aboards
- Discusses how dive boats differ from place to place
- Gives you focused experience and training for diving from boats in your local area
- Covers basic boat safety equipment and use
Multilevel Diver
Do you want to maximize your dive times?
In this course, you learn how to plan dives that extend your bottom time by crediting you for slower nitrogen absorption when you ascend to a shallower depth. That’s the way you really dive, after all.
You’ll learn to use The Wheel version of the RDP for planning multilevel dives, making it a great companion for your dive computer (as well as a way to make multilevel dives if you forget to bring your computer).
- Duration: 1 day – 2 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Plan and execute multilevel dives (different depths on the same dive)
- Back up your computer and plan multi-level dives with The Wheel
- Maximize your no stop time
Peak Performance Buoyancy
Float effortlessly, drifting over reefs.
Be the diver you want to be, with ultimate buoyancy control, able to hover close to the bottom and examine underwater organisms without touching them.
Buoyancy skills separate the good divers from the great divers. In the Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty course, you will learn to how to precisely weight yourself for optimum control, poise and balance. You learn to ascend and descend so effortlessly, it seems like you only think about it and it happens. By mastering streamlining, you move through the water cleanly, efficiently and gracefully. You swim near fragile environments without harm to them or yourself.
- Duration: 1 day – 2 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Buoyancy fundamentals, weighting and adjustments
- Streamlining, balance and trim
- Fine tuning buoyancy and mastering hovering
Search and Recovery
Accidentally drop something in the water? Looking for lost treasure?
If you’re looking for the challenge and excitement – along with doing your good deed for the day – this course is for you. It gives you the skills you need to find what’s been lost, and how to get it to the surface.
In the PADI Search and Recovery Diver Specialty course, you learn search and recovery dive planning, organization, procedures, techniques and how to deal with potential problems. You learn how to locate large and small objects using search patterns, and various ways for lifting them to the surface. Not only do these skills make you more capable and confident in the water, but most Search and Recovery Divers eventually end up searching for and recovering something they lost themselves.
- Duration: 2 days – 4 dives.
- Prerequisite: Advanced Open Water Diver
- Search patterns, lift bag use and recovery methods
- Limited visibility techniques and navigation for search and recovery
Underwater Naturalist
Are you fascinated with aquatic life?
Always wondering what that fish is and why it always dances under a coral head whenever you get close? If you’re engrossed with life under the surface, the PADI Underwater Naturalist Specialty course is especially for you.
In your journey to underwater naturalist, the course teaches you about the different major aquatic life groupings and how they interact so that you understand what you observe in the underwater environment. With the PADI Underwater Naturalist Specialty course under your belt, you see the aquatic world differently. You don’t see “fish,” but individual species with distinct strategies for surviving in a complex, interactive ecosystem.
- Duration: 1 day – 2 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Overview of aquatic life groupings and interrelations
- The role of aquatic plants, food chains and predator prey relationships
- Responsible interactions with aquatic life
Underwater Navigator
Be the diver everyone wants to follow.
When everyone’s buzzing about a reef or a wreck, they’re having a great time – until it’s time to go. Then they turn to you, because as a PADI Underwater Navigator, you know the way back to the boat.
Underwater navigation can be challenging, but in the PADI Underwater Navigator Specialty course, you master the challenge. You learn the tools of the trade, including navigation via natural clues and by compass. You learn to estimate distance underwater, follow navigation patterns and know where you are while following an arbitrary, irregular course using the Nav-Finder.
- Duration: 2 day – 3 dives.
- Prerequisite: Open Water Diver
- Navigation patterns, natural and compass navigation
- Following irregular courses with the Nav-Finder
- Dive site relocation