Description
2 days – 5 different advanced open water 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 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 and a mandatory navigation 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.
Since you don’t have to be an advanced diver to take the course, you can complete it directly after Open Water Diver Course. Popular options for the course dives include perfect buoyancy, drift diving, night diving, wreck diving, fish and marine life identification but also photography and videography.
Choose your course dives hereÂ
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.
Mandatory
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 it really matters. Therefore your instructor will make sure you aware of pressure, temperature, 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.
Recommended
Peak Performance 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 (recommended)
The perfect choice for diving on the Gili Islands 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 drift dive is 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 (recommended)
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 is located at Shark Point within recreational diving limits at about 28 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 good few years ago and has beautiful coral growth all over.
Fish Identification (recommended)
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 sea cucumbers.. :-))
Others
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 yet 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.
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…
- Dive against Debris (rubbish collection underwater)
- Underwater Naturalist (no, you don’t have to dive naked)
- DPV (once we will have one of those fun toys we will let you know)
- …. and of course ice and dry suit diving.
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 days of your course to look like this:
Day 1 (08:00 – 13:30)
- 2 course dives which include the theory and the actual dives. We will aim for the 08:30 am boat and the 11:00 pm boat
Day 2 (08:00 – 19:30)
- A big day of diving awaits! After two more fun adventure dives during the day we will explore the Gili’s underwater world at night
- After a dive is before a drink! Time to celebrate!
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 certification? Then please check our FAQ’s for some more details.
Important to know: Our courses are conducted in accordance with PADI standards.
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.
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.. 🙂