2011-12 SPECIALTIES CAMPAIGN - ONLY £95 A DAY
Doing your specialty course in the sea means doing it where it matters most in your diving. PADI Specialty courses are a great way to learn new skills and techniques. We conduct specialty courses throughout the year. When you do your specialty training with Underwater Explorers its more than a certification: You get hands-on access to the most contemporary diving techniques and future-proof equipment configurations.
Only experienced diving professionals with recreational --and-- technical qualifications conduct our specialty courses to guarantee 100% student satisfaction through an enhanced learning experience. Our friendly and professional instructors are highly experienced divers in their fields. You have the confidence of knowing that when you do a specialty course with us, you get more than an A-to-Z of a manual with hands on experience in real life conditions.
Email us for a Specialties Information Pack
ENRICHED AIR NITROX DIVER
£75 INCLUSIVE TILL MARCH 01, 2012
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.
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.
WRECK DIVER
Want to explore sunken ships, crashed planes and lost treasures beneath the surface?
Whether sunk on purpose as an artificial reef or the result of mishap, wrecks open fascinating windows to the past. Most divers find wrecked ships, airplanes and even automobiles nearly irresistible because they’re intriguing to explore, exciting avenues of discovery, and usually teeming with aquatic life. The PADI Wreck Diver course teaches you the ins and outs of rewarding, responsible wreck diving. The fun part of the PADI Wreck Diver course is visiting wrecks, unlocking mysteries and starting to gain the knowledge and experience that allows you to see things that others overlook. Sometimes, only the trained, experienced eye recognizes that a small hole or open door likely caused the vessel’s demise
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.
You will need following equipment to complete this course:
Standard Scuba Equipment
Primary and backup light
Cuttings Tools (x2)
SMB and reel/spool
Underwater notepad or slate and pencil
DRY SUIT DIVER
Want to stay warm and toasty on a dive?
Then dive dry. Yes!
Unlike a wetsuit, a dry suit seals you off from the outside water. 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.
Dry suits let you dive more challenging dive sites, and extend your dive season. 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.
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.
After your first few scuba dives, you soon want to explore a bit deeper. There’s something exciting and mysterious about the depth that attracts dives. 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.
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
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
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
SMB DIVER
This is a must for UK Divers looking to dive off the coast from boats. 
Learning a correct use of a Surface Marker Buoy (SMB) will increase your safety and comfort and will alert boat traffic and other divers to your location. If you’re ever involved in drift diving from a boat then a delayed SMB will allow your boat skipper to follow your dive and pick you up promptly upon surfacing. They are also a great visual reference on your ascents too.
The course will teach you the safest and easiest techniques to efficiently deploy a SMB underwater.
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? 
The PADI Drift Diver Specialty course introduces you to the coolest magic carpet ride you’ll ever experience. This course shows you how to enjoy rivers and ocean currents by “going with the flow,” staying with your dive partner, communicating with the dive boat and knowing where you are the whole time.
Drift Diving is nearly effortless and relaxing. You simply glide along and enjoy the rush of flying underwater while the current does the work.
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
EQUIPMENT SPECIALTY
Don’t miss a dive due to a scuba gear issue.
The more you know about how your dive gear works, the more comfortable you are with it and get better performance from it. Whether it's a blown o-ring, regulator problem, wetsuit tear or a broken fin strap, you can learn how to manage basic scuba equipment adjustments.
As a PADI Equipment Specialist, you are prepared for the basic scuba equipment maintenance, care and adjustments you'll encounter every day. In addition, you'll learn interesting background information about how your gear works, how it’s repair and other information that helps you with your equipment investment.
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.
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.
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).
This is a great way to learn how to make multilevel dives even if you forget to bring your dive 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
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