This Distinctive Specialty is designed for experienced divers who may decide to dive on their own, particularly popular with photographers, or for professional divers, such including Instructors and Divemasters who may not have an assigned buddy capable of assisting them in an emergency.
The course focus is preparing the self-reliant diver with dive planning and skills to enable the diver to perform self rescue techniques in case of an emergency. Skills such as navigation, air and depth awareness and out-of-air emergencies must be handled by the self-reliant diver.
There are 3 dives to be completed for this specialty and a theory session and Claire lined up two of our experienced club divers to act as guinea pigs for her first course.
A large component of diver safety involves equipment and as a self-reliant diver you need to be comfortable with the use of Surface Marker Buoys (SMB’s) and redundant air sources which can using include twin tanks, sidemount or sling bottles. Redundancy is key!
More equipment makes kitting up and self safety checks more interesting and you start to understand just how useful a buddy is. (or surface support) Buddies are also useful in pointing out interesting marine life you might miss – such as the octopus on the first dive proves.
Self-reliant diving definitely has a role for experienced divers but nothing quite beats the fun of sharing your dive experiences with others – underwater or at the beach!
Congratulations
If you are interested in becoming a PADI Self-reliant Diver please contact Claire for more course details.