Caves or caverns?

Just to clarify my point of view – the difference between a cave dive and a cavern dive is that you can always see the exit and some daylight during a cavern dive. This is not the case during a cave dive which is one reason why cave diving is much more dangerous and requires a more redundant set-up.

Comino

Comino is located between Malta and Gozo and it is a popular dive site. Boat is the only way to access the dive sites so it is a bit less crowded than other sites such as Um el Faroud. The bad thing here is that there are loads and loads of tourists coming up on boats from Malta for the day. They are often taken around Comino in speed boats and the speed boat drivers are very reckless and have no concept at all that it might not be a good idea to hover above divers or stay away from an inflated SMB. All in all – on a good day Comino is absolutely beautiful.

Diving Comino Caves

So on to the dive. It is in fact a very easy dive with a maximum depth of 12 metres. One of the highlights of the dive is experienced just when you jump in and descend onto the sandy bottim below you at 6-7 metres. There are thousands of bream here and they have beed fed by divers and visiting tourists for what must be hundreds of fish generations. As soon as they see a diver they swim up to you to see if you have any bread. If you do you will have so much fish around you so you can’t even see your buddies. Biologically correct? Probably not. Fun? Certainly.

The caverns themselves are extremely nice – remember to go slowly and it is nice with a torch. A camera is also a good idea – you can take some amazing photos here. There is not so much life in the caverns themselves but it is a magic feeling being in them. The only drawback is that they are actually quite small. Any diver with a bit of experience (15-20 dives) can easily do these caves as you have access to the surface except for a few metres, also in the cavern. After exiting you swim around the edge of Comino and you are back with the fish in the bay.  Usually this takes about 30 minutes or so – it is almost difficult to do a really long dive here.

I really like this dive because of it’s simplicity. The cavern is great and the breams very nice to look at. The boat traffic is a big problem – it is not only unsafe it also creates lots of noise which kills the atmosphere quite a bit. The caves are also a bit too small if one should be picky. All in all this is a four star dive in my books.

Sea Pioneers – Dahab
Sertaki – Dahab
Oxygene – Dahab
Dahab Tec Divers – Dahab
Red Sea Ringers – Dahab
Sea View Divers – Dahab
Centre at Rokita Hotel – Dahab
Callyez Aqua Tec – Dahab
SSX Hammer Head – Sharm El Sheikh
Divers Planet – Sharm El Sheikh
Dive For fun – Sharm El Sheikh
Sea & C – Sharm El Sheikh
Blue Lagoon* – Sharm El Sheikh
Magic Dive Club – Sharm El Sheikh
Brother Dive College – Sharm El Sheikh
Red Sea Ringers – Sharm El Sheikh
Aqua Nabq – Sharm El Sheikh
Halala Balala – Sharm El Sheikh
Easy Divers – Sharm El Sheikh
Divers Bay – Sharm El Sheikh
Centre at Aida Hotel (NOT Scuba Divers Red Sea) – Sharm El Sheikh
Absolut Divers – Sharm El Sheikh
Taba Divers – Taba

DAN recommended 1999 that you can dive your dives in any order you prefer basing this on the fact that there were no research available to prove the opposite and it seems that the incidence of DCI had not increased when divers had ignored the classic approach. This has since been followed by lots of diver but PADI has decided to keep their traditional approach – a very wise decision I think.

In 2005 an article was published about reverse profiling which really puts things in a different perspective.

Multi-level dives

- Two groups of 11 guinea pigs each got to do each forward and reverse multi level dive profiles
- In the group which did the forward profile (normal approach) no DCI was detected
- 55% of the animals in the reverse group developed serious DCI and died

This is quite clear evidence that there is a significant difference in forward and reverse diving profiles. One should keep in mind though that humans are quite different to guinea pigs and that these profiles must be very extreme. Doing the same tests for humans would probably give quite different results but the trend would most likely be the same.

Repetitive dives

Repetitive dives are a little bit more realistic – I don’t actually think that many divers would do reverse multi level dives as suggested above.

- Two groups were then used to test repetitive diving
- None of the guinea pigs in the forward profile group were injured vs 33% in the reverse diving profile group

Conclusion

It is clear to me that we don’t fully understand exactly what is going on during decompression. Although many divers have done reverse profiles without getting bent does not mean that they are safe – the investigation above clearly indicates the opposite. In addition to this - almost all research on tables etc is done based on forward profiling. With all this in mind I would strongly recommend anyone to follow the traditional approach and avoid reverse profiles.

You can read the full article at Rubicon Foundation.

This course is NOT a course in advanced diving opposite to what the name seems to suggest. It is still very much a beginners course but with some more elements added to the dives. Overall you can say that the Open Water course focuses on teaching the skills and basics of diving and this course is more about the experience of the dive.

Course structure and elective dives

The course is very differently structured compared to the Open Water course. The training is done during 5 Adventure Dives. 2 dives are compulsory – the Deep Dive and the Navigation Dive. The student then gets to choose 3 dives from a number of different dives. Options include:

• Underwater digital photography
• Boat diving
• Peak performance buoyancy
• Multilevel and computer diving
• Wreck diving
• Night diving
• Diving with underwater scooters
• Underwater Naturalist
• Project Aware
• Dry suit dive
• Search and recovery
• Nitrox
• Videography

A diver who has done 3 adventure dives can get certified as an Adventure Diver (which means absolutely nothing – a total waste of money). Upon completion of 5 adventure dives you get certified as an Advanced Open Water Diver and you are allowed to dive down to 30 meters.

Theory for PADI Advanced Open Water Diver

There is no written test for the AOW. Prior to each dive you read the chapter in the manual, complete the knowledge review and your instructor will go through the results and fill in any gaps you may have. That’s it. Often, unfortunately, this is sloppily done and the theoretical part is more of an excersise in order to not violate PADI standards. I think this is one of the major weaknesses of this course but more about that later.

Pool training

There is no pool training for AOW – everything is done in open water.

The Adventure Dives

So – the core of the course is the actual diving. This is not necessarily bad and correctly executed it will be a very good course in spite of the really weak theoretical requirements. The deep dive actually takes you down to about 30 meters and you get to do some pretty good skills that illustrates the problems with diving deeper.

The navigation dive can be good but is often very much a waste of time – it depends a lot on your instructor. Many students go through this without actually understanding why the should swim in a square or along a line. I think this is important but often this dive is simply ticked off in order to meet certification requirements. Not good.

Then we have the elective dives and here the quality varies greatly. The right instructor can make any dive very good but here you often see the lack of experience in instructors. I think that the general problem with AOW is that it is required much more experience from the instructors side than the OW. It is surprising how little some instructors know about decompression theory, marine life or history of the wrecks they are diving. Also – the PADI standards for these dives are ludicrously basic – for the wreck dive for example it is enough to simply swim around a wreck. What kind of development is that?

A good instructor and careful choice of the dives can make an excellent course. I like the triple Night diving, Multilevel diving and Peak Performance Buoyancy for example. If you live in colder countries Dry Suit is good. With a good instructor Naturalist can be excellent but it can be incredibly bad with the wrong one. Avoid Boat diving, Project Aware at any cost.

Conclusion

This is very much a hit and miss. I think new divers should do this course and it gives much more flexibility when going on dive trips. But beware – it is often taught by inexperienced instructors who are unable to do anything but carrying out the PADI standards which are way too lenient. You can pass through this course without actually learning anything and this is scary – I think that it is a big responsibility to dive to 30 metres and many people who are certified are not capable of doing this safely.

I disagree with the lack of a written test and I think it is done like this so it will be easier to sell. Perhaps this course should be more compared to “diving with a coach”. My conclusion is that most rookie instructors are unable to do a good AOW course – it takes lots of experience to be able to flesh out the poor standards and the course is often adapted to suit logistics rather than the students own needs.

So – do the course, but beware. Talk to your instructor beforehand and try to figure out if he or she actually knows anything about the topic they are teaching. Sounds scary? Welcome to the Scuba Diving Industry where you can go from total beginner to high ranking PADI Instructor in 8 months…