Explore – Experience and Enjoy! This is what the advanced scuba diving course is all about. We conduct our courses in line with PADI and SSI standards so you can choose between the Advanced Open Water Diver and Advanced Adventurer course. You don’t have to be an advanced diver to take it – the courses are designed to take your diving to the next level. The advanced course helps you to build confidence and skill through five different adventure dives – each one under a different motto.
Enjoy a 10% discount by booking online!
2 DAYS – 5 DIFFERENT ADVENTURE DIVES AROUND THE AMAZING GILI ISLANDS
OVERVIEW
Already a diver? Take it to the next level with an advanced course at Divine Divers, your Gili Meno dive center. The Advanced Open Water Diver Course (PADI) runs over two or three days and is a very practical course. There is no final exam and your main task will be the diving and staring at stunning marine life around the Gili Islands.
The advanced course consists of five adventure dives and it will certify you to dive to 30 meters in the future. Therefore, there is a mandatory deep dive – the other dives you can chose based on your interest. After the course you will be able to dive at dive sites or locations that are only accessible for advanced divers.
Actually, adventure dives are the first dive of a matching diving specialty – however, if you just want to try out as many dives as possible then the advanced course is for you. You could still add the specialties after the advanced diver course, should you choose to do so.
Since you don’t have to be an advanced diver to take the course, you can add it directly to your Open Water Diver Course. Popular options for the course dives include perfect buoyancy, drift diving, night diving, nitrox, fish and marine life identification but also photography and videography.
Continue your exploration, extend your dive time, reduce your air consumption and more! Your instructor will help you of course to find the best dives for your advanced diving course on the Gilis taking in consideration both the conditions and what you’d like to get out of it.
CHOOSE YOUR COURSE DIVES HERE
Continue your exploration, extend your dive time, reduce your air consumption and more! Your instructor will help you of course to find the best dives for your advanced diving course on the Gilis taking in consideration both the conditions and what you’d like to get out of it.
Deep Dive (mandatory)
You will gain the knowledge, skills and techniques needed to conduct dives to 30 meters. You have probably learned about diving physics and physiology during your open water course but deep diving is where is really matters. Therfore your instructor will make sure you aware of pressure, cold, colours and a potential nitrogen narcosis that might wait for you on your 30 meter dive. Don’t worry though – most people only feel it when they are made aware of it. For Junior divers (until they reach the age of 15 years) the depth is limited to 21 meters.
Navigation Dive (mandatory)
You might not always want to follow a guide or instructor. Therefore the Navigation Dive aims at teaching you advanced skills regarding the planning, organization, procedures, hazards and the joy of underwater navigation.
Perfect Buoyancy / PPB (recommended)
Most instructors will highly recommend this dive – probably even as the first dive of your course. We will spend the entire dive with a focus on the breathing, buoyancy, positioning and finning techniques. We can hopefully reduce the amount of weights you dive with but also prolong your overall dive time by improving your air consumption.
Drift Dive / Wave, Tide and Currents (recommended)
The perfect choice for diving on the Gilis since most of our dives are conducted as drift dives. Learn techniques on entering the water and diving in a current. You will also learn how to shoot an SMB (or in more correct terms: how to deploy a surface marker). A fun dive where the aim is to find a strong current to make the best of the learning experience.
Night Dive (recommended)
Some people are really scared of night dives – for others it is the highlight of the course. We at Divine Divers on Gili Meno think it is best to experience your first night dive together with an instructor in a controlled environment. It is actually most fun to enter the water at twilight to see the change in marine life. The day fish will go to sleep and the night hunters will come out. It is really exciting and you will have your torch (and of course instructor) guide your way.
Wreck Dive
Wrecks are cool! They often have a history that can make your imagination run wild and they are extremely exciting to explore. On the Gilis we have two wrecks: The Glen Nusa II is located at Shark Point within recreational diving limits at about 30 meters depth. There is also the Bounty wreck a little south of our house reef on Gili Meno. The Bounty lies in between 10 to 18 meters. It sank a few years ago and has beautiful coral growth all over.
Enriched Air Nitrox
Enjoy a dive on Nitrox. First learn about the basics and then take your first fancy Nitrox tank on a dive. It will allow you to stay at intermediate depth in between 20 and 30 meters longer so you’ll get to stay longer with the fishy action at depth or get to admire a wreck longer. You can easily also include the Nitrox speciality into the course and gain another certification.
Photo and Video
The perfect Instagram picture or story video might wait for you underwater. Learn about techniques and skills that you need to take pictures and videos so your underwater footage is more than just a blurry, blue-ish image of the universe that waits beneath the surface.
Fish Identification
A great introduction to some closer encounters with certain fish. For the fish identification dive we will teach you about the most important (tropical) fish families. Even if you are not able to identify each and every fish but you will able to put them into their families which will make it easier to tell them apart. You will also learn about the symbiosis that some marine life enters – if you are looking for nemo, you will know you’ll have to check anemones and certain crabs can be found on certain parts of other animals (like the little shrimp who lives on the bottom part of seacucumbers.. :-))
Shark Ecology & Conservation
Sharks are more than what Hollywood has been teaching us over the past decades. The shark ecology dive will teach you how to differentiate fiction from reality and the real threats for sharks while being able to observe them in their natural environment.
Search and Recovery
This dive is closely related to the rescue diver course and a great preparation for it. You will learn different search patterns to use in various conditions and the proper techniques to lift objects. Maybe it will help you to recover that lost gold of the sunken ship that you will encounter on one of your dives. Ok, maybe also not.. 🙂 It is still a fun dive.
And more
There are also other adventure dives such as boat diving or computer diving which we don’d usually recommend. You will conduct all training dives with a dive computer anyway and all our dives are boat dives, therefore we suggest that you chose adventure dives that actually teach you something new.
Other less popular options include…
Because they are less popular it doesn’t mean we don’t offer them. We might just encounter some issues with freezing the ocean and you might suffer a heat stroke in the dry suit.
SCHEDULE
The course schedule is flexible and we can of course accommodate your personal preferences. It would be great if you could come a day in advance (or contact us digitally) to receive your learning materials and discuss the dives you’d like to do. At Divine Divers on Gili Meno we usually conduct the course in 2 days which means that on one day you do 2 dives and the other day you will do three dives. If you find that this might be too much, we can easily split the course over 3 days as well. In general, expect the 2 or 3 days of your course to look like this:
Day 1 (08:30 – 16:30)
Day 2 (08:30 – 19:30)
Day 3 (08:30 – 11:00 or 17:00 – 19:30)
DETAILS (FOR THOSE WHO LIKE TO KNOW MORE)
Would you like to have more information on the advanced course, such as the theory or the open water dives? Or you would like to know what you can do with the advanced open water or advanced adventurer certification? Then please check our FAQ’s for some more details.
Our courses are conducted in accordance with PADI and SSI standards. If not mentioned otherwise, you are booking an SSI course. Should you prefer PADI, it is absolutely no problem. Just leave us a note when placing the order. If you are interested in learning about the difference between the two agencies, you’ll find answers in the FAQ’s
If you’d like to complete the theory before your arrival online, let us know as well, we will be glad to help you with registering and receiving the theory package.
You will also find the full (onsite) price list, the cancellation policy and our terms and conditions in the download section.
CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE
Yes, there is more and lifelong learning is the key – not just in diving! If you’d like to continue your diving adventure check following options
and many more.. 🙂
OUR COURSES ARE ALL-INCLUSIVE AND YOU WILL ENCOUNTER NO HIDDEN COSTS DURING YOUR DIVING JOURNEY.
TO ENROL INTO THE COURSE PLEASE CHECK THE FOLLOWING:
SECURE YOUR PREBOOKING DISCOUNT
Please make sure you book the course one day before your arrival. We know it is tempting to just learn about the prebooking discount and then quickly book online but if everyone does that, we will at one stage have to adapt our prices to meet that behaviour.
Plans change. We know that too. Our cancellation policy is flexible and we are trying our best to meet your holiday schedule and potential interruptions of it.
To secure your prebooking discount you can either pay for your course or dive experience in full in advance (online) or you pay for it upon arrival. Please book it through our online system through.
We can however only send you the login details for the eLearning packages once you have paid in advance since it also involves costs for us. In the (hopefully unlikely) event that you can’t start the course as planned, you will get of course more time to make it to the island and if even that isn’t going to happen, you will get all your money back minus the arising expenses. Those we will however push through to you as much at cost price as possible. You will not be empty handed through because you are still in procession of the dive theory.
If you’d like to know more, please check our cancellation policy and terms and condition.
IS THERE A LOT OF THEORY?
Before going on your adventure dive you will read the matching theory chapter in the manual. This if followed by an indepth briefing by your instructor and a strong debriefing after the dive. We will make sure that there are no questions unanswered and that all knowledge reviews are well understood.
CAN I DO THE THEORY BEFORE COMING TO THE ISLAND?
Yes, there are options, but since the advanced course is a very practical course and there isn’t much theory in general, we recommend you to wait with reading the theory chapters until you have actually started the course or about to do so.
WHAT WILL I LEARN ON THE OPEN WATER DIVES?
The five adventure dives are there for you to learn about different aspects of diving. You will have to do a deep dive for sure and you can chose from a long list of opther options. Which dive you will do on what day will strongly depend on the conditions and your preferences.
HOW LONG DOES MY CERTIFICATION LAST?
The licence is recognized worldwide and there is no expiry date. It’s highly recommended that you keep in practice. If you haven’t dived in a while, it might be wise to refresh your skills on a Refresher or Scuba Tune Up Dive with an instructor. Continuing your scuba education is also a great way to keep your skills fresh and up to date.
DO I NEED TO CHANGE A JUNIOR CERTIFICATION?
No, once you or your child turns 15 the certification automatically counts as a “normal” adult certification. However, if you wish to change it, just contact the diving agency and they will be able to remove the “junior” part of it.
WHAT IF I HAVE HEALTH ISSUES?
There are some serious conditions such as epilepsy, active asthma, emphysema, heart disease or haemophilia that could prohibit any diving activity. Please check out the attached medical form. If you answer any of the questions with “yes”, then you need to see a doctor to get a fit for diving certificate. There are also doctors on the Gili Islands that can examine you and issue this certificate, so don’t worry if you didn’t check the medical form beforehand.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PADI AND SSI?
If you are interested in getting a scuba diving certification, you’ve probably come across PADI and SSI, the two major training agencies in the world. You might have asked yourself: Is there a big difference or is one better than the other?
Instructors of both agencies will teach you how to be a skilled diver, as there is a certain skill set that every diver needs to have. To make sure of this, all diving agencies follow a legal framework laid down by the World Recreational Scuba Diving Council. The training agencies also accept each other; hence you could do an Open Water Course with the one and an Advanced Course with another diving agency.
The main difference is in the theoretical education, requirements and certification costs. And of course, much comes down to personal preferences and other factors such as the teaching skills of your instructor and the conditions of the water.
Often the names for the programmes are the same or very similar, in other cases they differ. E.g.: SSI calls the advanced course “Advanced Adventurer” whereas PADI calls it “Advanced Open Water”. PADI requires the mandatory completion of the Deep and Navigation Dive whereas SSI only requires the Deep Dive and the other fours dives can be chosen by you. Apart from that there is no big difference.
There is an Advanced Open Water option for SSI as well but it is a recognition rating that comes free of charge after the completion of 4 specialty courses and at least 24 logged dives. Talk to us if this is what you are after.
In general, SSI allows more flexibility in teaching methods and allows a more personalized approach in teaching. Also, SSI is app-based and slightly more digitalized than PADI. Therefore, we have chosen SSI as our primary teaching agency. Should you prefer a PADI course, just let us know in the booking – this is also absolutely no problem.
WHY SHOULD I DO A DIVING COURSE ON THE GILI ISLANDS?
Postcard-like white sandy beaches, azure and year-round warm waters (28 to 29 degrees), the reef on your doorstep and a great lifestyle – does this sound like paradise to you? To us it does! The Gilis are known as the turtle capital in the world – rightfully so, because both green and hawksbill turtles are abundant. Reef sharks are also frequently spotted and there is a broad range of marine life to be met on all dives. The dive sites are rarely more than a 15-minute boat ride away and diving is great all year round. The dry season is running from May to October and the rainy season from November to April. Rainy season sounds more extreme than it actually is because it hardly ever rains an entire day – expect showers at different severity but therefore less people.
WHY SHOULD I CHOOSE DIVINE DIVERS ON GILI MENO?
We love what we do and we do it well! We have been in the game for over 10 years as Divine Divers on Gili Meno but our passion for diving didn’t start there. During our long dive careers, we have dived all over the world both professionally and recreationally. Sometimes you come to dive centers that just have the little extra. A place you enter and you feel instantly at home. Being surrounded by likeminded people in a chill yet professional atmosphere. This is exactly what we had in mind when setting up Divine Divers – we live Divine – for us it is more than a business. It is part of our family that we would like to share with just mentioned likeminded souls. Overall, our main differentiator is our personal approach – and of course our location at the most perfect sunset point on the island. What better way is there to end a perfect diving day than watching the sun disappear into the ocean.
Apart from that our groups are small and our instructors hand chosen for their personality and excellent teaching records. Safety is our primary concern; our equipment is in excellent order and of course regularly maintained. We are committed to offering first-class service and superior quality dive courses.
