Many exciting dive sites are located in deeper water. Without proper training, this kind of diving puts you at risk. The SSI Deep Diving Specialty will give you the ability to safely and comfortably plan and conduct dives beyond 60 feet. It is required training for many charter and liveaboard operations and is a prerequisite for some advanced training.
Why learn deep diving?
There are endless reasons for a diver to want to push their boundaries and venture deeper. There are amazing wrecks and reefs just waiting for you down there to explore what they have to offer. The deep diver course gives you the experience, techniques, and ability to be prepared for the new challenges you’ll face by going deeper. The underwater world is very different once you start going deeper than 60ft. Nitrogen narcosis, decompression planning, and air consumption have more rigid requirements at depth. These are just a few of the reasons why diving deeper is much safer with the proper training. The Deep Diving class includes one class session, one pool session, and a minimum of 3 open water dives. These dives can be completed from some select shore diving sites.
Our deep diving course is unlike ANY OTHER and trains you not only to experience added depth in a safe environment but also how to plan for and mitigate potential added risks. Our deep diving program teaches both new equipment techniques and skills that other deep-diving courses don’t even address.
ADVANCED SKILLS INCLUDE:
Delayed Surface Marker Buoy (DSMB) Deployment – A DSMB is a brightly colored inflatable tube that can be inflated and deployed while at depth. This tube is attached to a line and spool you hold at depth so that you can maintain contact and control of it while it is at the surface. This tool and the technique are paramount for deep divers to master so in the event they get separated from their team or the ascent line to their surface support (i.e. a dive boat) they can quickly mark their location without having to quickly ascend. A skill that takes practice to master but is of the utmost importance to deep divers.
Redundant Gas Supply Orientation and Use – As depth increases so does pressure. This added pressure causes a diver to consume more gas the deeper they go. At 66 feet a diver will consume 3x the amount of gas they do at the surface and 4x in 99 feet of water. This added gas consumption can create a big problem if you need to share air at depth. The added depth can also cause a regulator to have a drastic reduction in performance if more than one diver is breathing hard on it, such as in a real-world gas sharing scenario. Lastly, it is also very reassuring to have a completely redundant supply of gas in case yours fails so you still can ascend at a controlled rate and perform a proper safety stop
This is why we equip and teach all of our deep-diving students to use pony bottles. A pony bottle is a small cylinder (1/3 to 1/2 the size of your primary tank) that has an independent regulator system. This additional bottle can take a bit of getting used to but adds a tremendous amount of safety to deeper dives and we recommend it to any of our divers venturing deeper or in poor visibility conditions that could lead to team separation such as scallop diving.
Advanced Dive Planning – The days of jumping into the water without a well-vetted dive plan are over. How much gas do I need to have left in my tank to have a realistic chance of getting myself and my team to the surface in an out of gas scenario? Does my team have enough gas to help me should I have a lost gas failure? What is our emergency plan should the team get separated at depth. How will redundant dives affect my decompression limits based on previous dive times and depth? How can I plan for a multilevel dive with my team? What likely failure scenarios does this deeper dive introduce and how can my team better prepare for them? These are not hard questions to answer but they do require some thinking and know-how which is all addressed during our deep diving program.
This course only runs from May – October.
Please use the “Book Now!” link to signup. You can schedule your class dates with our staff in-person, over the phone, or via email.