Structurally the course consists of five dives – two of which always has to be a deep dive and a navigation dive. The remaining three dives are chosen together with your instructor. One dive we always try and encourage people to do, when they take their advanced course is the peak performancy buoyancy dive. In it, through various activities and games, you practise your buoyancy, and most people – even experienced divers find they get a lot from it. When our conservation volunteers go through the program, usually it makes sense to log two of the dives as a Fish ID dive and and a Night dive, where we try and identify various species around our divesites on Negros. The Fish ID dive obviously has a focuses on fish, and the grouping of certain families, tell-tale markings etc, while the naturalist dive focuses on the ecosystems at large and we look at plantlife, invertebrates etc.

If you’re not doing the Advanced Open Water course through our volunteer program, you have more choice in the matter. Amongst other possibilities you can choose between wreck diving, drift diving, night diving and a host of other options.