PADI Wreck Diver

Course Overview

This course is designed as an introduction to wreck diving and to help the student develop the skills and knowledge necessary for safe wreck diving.

Prerequisites

• Advanced Open Water certification (or equivalent)
• Minimum age: 15 years of age

Course Structure

This course consists of two classroom sessions and four wreck dives.

The classroom sessions include:

• Planning, organisation, procedures, techniques, identifying potential hazards of wreck diving and problem prevention
• The preparation and use of lights, air supplies, special equipment, penetration lines and reels
• Limited visibility diving techniques and emergency procedures
• Deep Diving:
  • N2 narcosis
  • O2 toxicity
  • Decompression sickness
  • safety stops
  • required decompression stops
• Assessing the wreck
• Penetration techniques:
  • permanent lines
  • wreck reels
  • progressive penetration
• Equipment requirements, configurations, and management
• Buoyancy skills and control, and anti-silting techniques
• Line use: permanent lines and reels
• Wreck navigation techniques
• Mapping wrecks
• Air loss: redundancy and alternate air sources
• Emergency ascent procedures: free ascents and Emergency Ascent Lines

Four wreck dives over a two-day period are required to receive a PADI certification. In this course, you will become familiar with various wrecks around Qatar. Wrecks include the Al Gharbi and Al Sharji. Wreck Penetration is an option, but not a requirement for PADI certification.

Equipment

Wreck diving is an equipment intensive activity and it's important to have the proper equipment for the type of wreck diving that you will be doing. You will need the following:

Standard Equipment: mask, fins, snorkel, wetsuit, BCD, regulator with alternate air source, pressure gauge, computer and compass. The Weight belt can be integrated into BCD or sbe a standard belt design, but with twin buckles for safety.

2 Tanks per day: minimum 100 ft3 singles or doubles.

Lights: minimum one primary and one backup light (two backup lights are recommended).

Knives: Two knives, one on the leg and one on the BCD.

(Bring your equipment to class)