Adventure Dives are a great opportunity to work with your instructor to enhance your scuba skills without having to enroll into another course. If you’d like to receive deep or night dive training and don’t have the time for an advanced course, the matching adventure dives would be your first choice.
Enjoy a 10% discount by booking online!
OVERVIEW
You’d like to continue your dive training but you don’t have the time, money or feel like doing another course? You still want to be able to dive to 30 meters though. A dilemma – NOT!
Adventure dives would be your solution to above mentioned conflict. Adventure dives are in fact the first dive of a matching speciality program. Therefore, they count towards the speciality AND an Advanced Course. For example: If you conduct an adventure deep dive, you would have to do 3 more dives (instead of 4) to obtain a full Deep Diver Specialty certification. At the same time the adventure deep dive can be credited towards an Advanced Open Water or Advanced Adventurer certification as well.
Adventure Dives open up more diving possibilities and enhance your skills because you are receiving formal training from an instructor.
An Adventure Dive consist of some self-study reading materials, a theory lesson and of course a training dive to practice the subject of interest.
Dive deeper, continue your exploration, extend your dive time, reduce your air consumption and more! Your instructors at Divine Divers Gili Meno will help you to find the right adventure dive.
Completing an adventure dive will earn you an official recognition certificate that proofs your training.
CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE DIVES HERE
Even though there is a great selection of adventure dives, we will only go into detail and explain adventure dives that (in our humble opinion) make sense for diving the Gili Islands and Indonesia in general. If you’d like any further information on adventure dives not listed here, just drop us a line and we will be glad to assist.
Adventure Deep Dive (most popular)
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. Your instructor will make sure you aware of pressure, cold, colours and other factors you might encounter on your 30-meter dive.
As you drop below 18 meters, your air consumption increases and your no-compression time decreases. Buoyancy declines and you might even begin to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis. None of these are hard to deal with as long as you know how you can manage them. We will also test how susceptible you are to nitrogen narcosis.
Getting narced (diving lingo) is an impairment of your thinking processes caused by breathing nitrogen under pressure. People describe it as feeling drunk, or being really slow or inhaling laughing gas. For some, it can give a false sense of security, inappropriate euphoria and others get a bit panicky. Narcosis differs greatly from diver to diver and even from dive to dive. It isn’t usually serious or overdramatic and disappears as soon as you ascent. However, it is important to recognize and manage nitrogen narcosis as simple errors can become big problems for divers.
Adventure Night Dive (second most popular)
Diving in the dark may seem scary. It is something many divers start off being very nervous about and end up laughing and loving. 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 – either as part of a diving course or as an adventure night dive. During a night dive, we will all stay close together. Everyone has a flashlight so the closer you are to the other divers (and their torches), the more light you will have. Remember, it is not as daunting as you first think it is.
On a night dive you can spot sea creatures that are active at night but very hard to find during the day. It is actually most fun to enter the water at twilight to see the change in marine life. The diurnal fish will go to sleep and the nocturnal fish will take over the reef.
We often experience bioluminescence. These are tiny plankton type organisms in the water that glow when set in motion. A chemical reaction that takes place inside the plankton causes them to light up (a little bit like in a forest with fireflies). It is a beautiful and fascinating! In order to experience bioluminescence, we will get all close together and preferably hold on to a line. We will then switch off our torches and wave our hands around and watch the show.
Once you have fallen in love with night diving and you are really comfortable in the dark, you can also try UV night diving. Enter the movie Avatar for an hour and get carried away by imagination – it really is an experience like no other.
Adventure Dive Perfect Buoyancy / Peak Performance Buoyancy (should be more popular)
Buoyancy is the most important skill to master in scuba diving. It is a skill that most beginners struggle with and most instructors will highly recommend additional buoyancy training. Your buoyancy is influenced greatly by your breathing which in turns affects the amounts of weight you carry- This again has an influence on your positioning in the water, etc. Of course, one dive is not enough to perfect your breathing and buoyancy but it is usually a great step towards it. Adventure PPB (Peak Performance Buoyancy) will help you to understand how buoyancy affects you and how to master it. It is one of the most fun but also helpful training dives. We will work on your breathing and use probes or obstacles to enhance the learning experience. Some instructors will take you into the pool before conducting the open water dive to work with you on a certain skill set.
By the way, to perfect your buoyancy also results in a lower air consumption and prolongs your dive time.
Adventure Drift Dive / Wave, Tide and Currents (popular)
Currents are common on the Gili Islands. But water motions and especially currents can be challenging for new divers. However, diving in currents often opens up a world of new dive sites that often host the most spectacular marine life. Done properly, drift diving can be both relaxing and exhilarating at the same time. During this adventure dive we will teach you how to go with the flow as we use the current to glide along. We will also attempt your first ever negative entry which means that we won’t meet each other on the surface and then descent together. We will empty our BC’s before entering the water, descent immediately and meet at 5 meters depth. The skills you will learn during this training are fundamental skills you will use many times in your diving adventures.
Adventure Wreck Dive (popular)
A popular choice among students. Wrecks are fascinating to explore and offer a rewarding and adventurous experience for divers. Shipwrecks are also often teeming with marine life. While you won’t be able to penetrate a wreck on this training dive, you will learn about the hazards and safety techniques of wreck diving including finning techniques to avoid stirring up sediments or disturbing marine life.
We have two wrecks on the Gilis: The Glen Nusa II (a shipwreck) is located at Shark Point within recreational diving limits at about 30 meters depth. There is also the Bounty wreck (a sunken jetty with abundant marine life) a little south of the Divine Divers house reef on Gili Meno. The Bounty lies in between 10 to 18 meters.
Adventure Dive Fish Identification (mainly popular as part of an Advanced Course)
When you start diving you often have no idea what you are looking at. All you know is that what you see is pretty amazing. While you might recognize Nemo (anemone fish) and a turtle, most of the other fish just look colourful and fascinating. Identifying fish is a great way to start learning all about the new world you have discovered. Instead of thinking “what a pretty fish” you will actually know the names of a few of them after only one training dive and a bit of theory.
Adventure Navigation Dive (only popular as part of an Advanced Course)
A popular option on all PADI Advanced Open Water Courses. No surprise, it is a mandatory dive. The Adventure Navigation Dive aims at teaching you advanced skills regarding the planning, organization, procedures, hazards of underwater navigation.
Adventure Dive Photo and Video (popular as a specialty program)
A dive that will teach you the basics of shooting videos and photos underwater. From learning how to use a camera in this environment, an introduction to white balancing or using lights and buoyancy control. You will also really focus on slowing down and examining the dive site. In our opinion you will get the most out of underwater photography and videography if you are a little more advanced and do a specialty course instead of just one adventure dive. For some beginners, adding a camera will make things (aka buoyancy) more difficult becaue your attention is on the camera and not the coral block to your side where you might crash into.
Adventure Nitrox Dive (yes and no)
It is possible to just try a dive on Nitrox and learn some basics about enriched air diving. But it actually makes more sense to then do the Enriched Air Specialty course which can both be done as diving and non-diving course.
And more
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 get a bit bit warm in your dry suit.
SCHEDULE
Adventure Dives include face-to-face theory lessons and a training dive. You will also receive some reading materials that you can do in your own time (preferably before the training). There is no specific time of the day when we conduct adventure dives. Just let us know which dive you’d like to do and we plan and schedule accordingly.
DETAILS (FOR THOSE WHO LIKE TO KNOW MORE)
Would you like to have more adventure dive information? 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
You will also find the full (onsite) price list, the cancellation policy and our terms and conditions in the download section.
CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE
Adventure dives are the first dive of a matching specialty. If you have liked your adventure dive, you might also be interested in the following specialty courses
If you have recently done an adventure dive and you would like to proceed in your diving career, we can of course also offer you the Advanced Adventurer / Advanced Open Water Course.
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.
ARE ADVENTURE DIVES MANDATORY DIVES?
There is not really a yes or no answer to that. The Deep and Navigation Adventure Dives as part of an Advanced course are mandatory dives. However, if conducted separately they are not mandatory dives.
Please bear in mind: Dive centres and instructors will not usually take you on deep dives unless you have done an Advanced Course. An Adventure Deep Dive will be recognized (by most) as deep dive training and opens up new dive sites for you.
An Adventure Night Dive is not a mandatory requirement to go on night dives, even though we highly recommend it. Some will insist on you doing appropriate night dive training before taking you on a night dive. It is however more dependent on the dive center and the instructor if he/she will take you on your first ever night dive without any kind of training. We at Divine Divers on Gili Meno take your diving skills and your comfort in the water into consideration before recommending you either option. Whereas for some it is easily possible to just join a night dive, others might hugely benefit from a training dive.
CAN I COLLECT ADVENTURE DIVES?
Yes! Nobody tells you to do an advanced course, even though this might be the easier (and cheaper) option. Once you have done three adventure dives, you could apply for the Adventure Diver Certification which is a PADI diving ticket and subset of the Advanced Open Water Course that includes 3 adventure dives of your choice.
HOW LONG WILL MY CERTIFICATION LAST?
The answer to this question depends on the diving agency. At the time of publication PADI Adventure Deep Dive certifications are valid for 1 year, and in that time you need to complete the rest of the PADI Advanced Open Water Course. But other agencies such as SSI don’t set a time limit, and you can remain an Open Water Diver certified to 30 metres for the rest of your diving life. In reality, most divers who take the Adventure Deep go on to complete the rest of the Advanced Course at some stage in the near future.
CAN I DIVE WITH HEALTH ISSUES?
There are some serious conditions such as epilepsy, active asthma, emphysema, heart disease or haemophilia that could prohibit any diving activity. Since you are looking at advanced training dives you have most likely filled in a medical questionnaire before and you know if you have to see a doctor before going diving or not.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PADI AND SSI?
PADI and SSI are 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 potential eLearning 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.
In general, SSI allows more flexibility in teaching methods and allows a more personalized approach in teaching. 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 GILIS?
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?
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.
Apart from that we are located in paradise and at the most beautiful spot on Gili Meno. 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.
