Once again our local divers joined forces to support the Wellington Volunteer Coastguard and participated in the 24 Hour Dive Challenge. 53 divers conducted 44 dives, logging 104 individual dives in 24 hours and raised over $2500 (to date) Teams of divers entered the waters of Scorching Bay, Wellington in a […]
Dive Course
Where’s My Buddy?!
Lost buddy procedure Twelve meters deep, fifteen minutes into a dive and you lose your dive buddy. What do you do? The lost buddy procedure is something that we all learnt as Open Water Divers but does everyone understand what, why, when and how this is done? Wellington’s conditions can be tough, and with limited […]
Paddy the PADI Freediver!
In July I had the opportunity to take part in the new PADI Freediver and Advanced Freediver courses. This training was amongst some of the most challenging and rewarding experience I had ever taken part in. Enrolling in the course was a pretty last minute decision even though I had wanted to do […]
Enriched Air Nitrox
Although Nitrox has been used inrecreational diving for almost 25 years, it is still often misunderstood. As an instructor, I’ve found myself correcting countless students who are under the impression that Nitrox enables a person to dive deeper than normal air — this is just one of the common misconceptions about Nitrox diving. Although specific […]
First Night Dive of 2017
Last week our dive club met up after work to explore one of our local dive sites, Scorching Bay. With a juvenile reef system and a maximum depth of 7m you might not expect to see a lot but we caught up with George, our resident conger eel, found a whole nest of crays, saw […]
Is it safe to get back in the water this summer?
There we were at Kau Point getting set up for an enjoyable dive (just like we had many times before). Then out of the blue (greenish if you are going by the water colour) we were informed that there was a lost object that needed to be found. Little did we know that our lovely […]
Sidemount Diving
Sidemount diving has been around for a long time. It has always been used in the secretive world of the extreme cave and wreck explorers, allowing them to get into tighter restrictions inaccessible to back mounted divers. Nowadays sidemount is becoming popular with open water diving for several reasons. […]
Gateway Open Water Course
There are certainly plenty of course options for students these days and for a group of students from Hutt Valley High School keen to join the Royal New Zealand Navy the opportunity to complete their PADI Open Water Diver Course was too good to pass up. After collecting their packs and doing their homework (well […]
Hollis Explorer Rebreather
Rebreathers are making headway into mainstream diving and the Hollis Explorer is perfectly designed with the recreational diver in mind. The Explorer is an electronic semi-closed rebreather (eSCR) an intelligent hybrid that is compact, lightweight and extremely easy to use. The Explorer is unique in using a single gas blend of 32-40% Nitrox is electronically controlled to […]
PADI Self-Reliant Diver
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 […]