AFTER OCEAN DIVER
The next step...
Qualifying as a diver opens up a whole world of possibilities. So with your Ocean Diver qualification under your( weight) belt, what can you do next?
The first and best thing to do is go diving, join a few club trips and get a bit of experience. The more you dive, the more you’ ll enjoy it. If you are looking to progress your training, the natural next step for Ocean Divers is to move to the BSAC Advanced Ocean Diver grade( bsac. com / aod). This course builds on your existing Ocean Diver knowledge and develops your confidence, skills and experience so that you can enjoy a wider range of diving sites and conditions. It also allows you to progress your depth to a maximum of 30m, opening up even more diving opportunities! Or, you could progress straight to the BSAC Sports Diver course( bsac. com / sd). As you start getting out and about, almost immediately you’ ll see how a lot of divers are fascinated by shipwrecks. The sense of history and the opportunities for research make it a rewarding focus for underwater exploration. BSAC divers have always been at the centre of wreck research – it was a group from BSAC club Southsea SAC that first located the wreck of the famous Mary Rose!
Or you may find you prefer to pursue natural history or scenic diving, which focuses more on reefs. Lots of divers become involved in sea surveys or environmental voluntary work and marine life identification is the first step to truly understanding the undersea world.
Ultimately, many divers enjoy both wreck and reef dives as wrecks become artificial reefs and sustain their own ecosystems.
As you begin to learn more about the fragile nature of the sea, it makes sense to support groups such as the Marine Conservation Society or record species with survey systems like Seasearch.
Once your buoyancy is perfected and you are confident in your overall diving ability, you might choose to take a camera – suitable for underwater – with you. Underwater photography can add so much to your diving and is a great way to capture some fantastic memories. Photography can also help with marine life surveys and wreck identification, so there are plenty of links between photography and other specialities.
As you progress through BSAC’ s diver training grades, you may wish to explore technical diving, which involves advanced techniques and equipment. This can be done in various ways, such as with BSAC’ s Skill Development Courses in the use of twin cylinders and methods of safely speeding up decompression stops. The next step could then be to qualify in the use of trimix gas to venture to depths beyond 50 metres, or to train in the use of a rebreather, which offers a completely different system to scuba. BSAC has a strong contingent of technical divers and a set of courses to meet all requirements.
The volunteer ethos lies at the core of BSAC life. Since 1953, our divers have been helping each other and training new generations. Becoming an instructor is a lot less complicated than you may imagine, and many of our most experienced divers say that introducing new people to scuba is the most satisfying aspect of their own diving. You need to be a Sports Diver before you can start training to become a BSAC Instructor but it is certainly something to aim for. To teach someone to dive is an empowering experience and many BSAC instructors have gone on to have careers as professional scuba guides, charter boat skippers and commercial dive school instructors.
Turning diving into a career is a tantalising option and there are opportunities out there. Dive instruction should not be confused with commercial diving, which is completely removed from the recreational diving world. For this, you need a commercial qualification administered by the Health and Safety Executive and it is an exacting lifestyle, far removed from the innocent pleasures of going diving for the fun of it.
Whatever choices you make as a recreational diver, BSAC’ s training system is there to support you. With the exception of commercial diving, BSAC covers all the areas in this article in its Skill Development Courses( SDCs) or in its diver grades. All training courses and opportunities can be explored at bsac. com / sdc
For further information on learning to dive with BSAC please call the BSAC team on 0151 350 6201
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