what do you consider an advanced dive?

[AfterDark]

To me an advanced diver is a diver that can handle all varied dive able conditions of sites. The advanced diver understands the effects of wind, tide, current and surge has on the site and potentially the dive. The advanced diver also knows when conditions at a site are NOT dive able.

 

[xyrandomyx]

Reading a few of the responses, I wonder if it's not more useful to talk about the skills needed, beyond the bare basics, than trying to fit dives into the very broad categories of 'beginner' and 'advanced'? If you're used to diving in the tropics, a temperate-water dive which requires at least a thick wetsuit in relatively poor visibility might be 'advanced', but, for me, that's just standard conditions. On the other hand, we don't really get currents here, so a dive in warm, clear water with moderate or strong currents might be 'advanced' to me. So I'm thinking that saying that, for example, a dive requires some proficiency with cold-water gear or some experience in dealing with currents or whatever is more helpful to a diver trying to evaluate whether their skill and comfort level matches a dive than just labeling it 'advanced'.

 

[rivers]

To me, an advanced dive would be any dive that pushes a diver to their comfort level and/or skill-set. There are sites that I've dived here in the UK that were a generally easy dive on one particular day, but later in the year were a more challenging for one reason or another. For example, there is a site I have dived twice this year. It's a wreck at about 35m. The first time I dived it, we had about 8m vis, lots of ambient light, and were on neap tides. I found it to be a very enjoyable, and quite an easy dive to do. I did it again just over a month ago. Vis was maybe a meter, I'm not sure as someone turned the lights out at 15m and it was pitch black on the bottom. It was also spring tides on the solstice. Just getting down the shot without being blown off made it more challenging. It was still an enjoyable dive, but it pushed my boundaries a bit more. If I had those conditions on the first dive, early in the summer, I would have called it on the shot line. But, by that point in the season, I had managed nearly 20 sea dives, plus loads of quarry time as well, and I felt confident enough to push myself a bit more.

 

[Darnold9999]

Tough question. To me a dive is not advanced if I can make a mistake and recover easily. As opposed to a dive where if I make a mistake I am in serious trouble. The mistake can be in navigation, gas management, gear failure - whatever.

In less personal terms insert average diver instead of "I".

 

[TSandM]

Darnold just wrote what I was going to say -- a site is a beginner site if you'd have to work to get into trouble there; it's more advanced as the number of ways you can get into difficulties goes up. And just because somebody CAN get herded through a dive site without incident, doesn't make it not an advanced dive. It just means some of the variables are being controlled by someone other than the diver.

 

[boulderjohn]

My definition of an advanced dive will fit all levels of divers.

An advanced dive is any dive that is towards the upper end (or beyond) of your training, your comfort level, or your abilities.

Each diver may very well have different "advanced levels" from one day to the next even if it is the same dive site.

I had an interesting experience in this regard a couple of weeks ago. I was diving with two friends in pretty benign conditions off the Yucatan coast in Akumal. The boat rides were short, so we would go out, dive, and come back to shore between dives. One day we did a morning dive, and the DM said that he noticed we were the only ones signed up for the afternoon dive, and he wanted to take us to a site that would be more interesting and more suited to our abilities. As we prepared to get on the boat that afternoon, we were concerned by the fact that another couple had signed up for the dive, and they did not seem to have a lot of experience.

Sure enough, they only had about 20 dives each, and buoyancy was an issue. For the first 5 minutes of the dive, the 3 of us hovered nearby as the DM gave the two (the wife especially) a buoyancy lesson. This was important, because the DM had chosen a site that had intricate channels through the coral. As we did the dive, it became obvious that even with that impromptu lesson, the dive was too advanced for that couple, and the DM ended up skipping a couple of nice looking channels. After the dive, he talked to them about their weighting (too much) and other things they needed to work on to make their diving more enjoyable.

But here's my point....

The DM did not realize this, but I had just certified my supposedly more advanced friends the day before. This was their first day diving after their OW certification.

It shows the tremendously wide range of what constitutes an advanced diver, and what constitutes an advanced dive. It also shows what it takes to become advanced. How many overweighted dives would that couple have to do in conditions that really didn't matter before their skills improved enough to be considered advanced? I submit that no number would be right. Doing a dive that raised the ante on their skills, and having a DM stop the dive and work with them on their skills did more to improve them than all their previous dives combined. Simply repeating the same basic dives over and over again will do nothing to move you to an advanced level of diving.

 

[Steve_C]

Was in San Francisco for a couple days. Had arranged for a DM to take me diving in Monterey Bay for the first time. Woke to blue skies and light breezes. DM called. Wind had shifted. There were now very major swells from the wrong direction, 10-12 ft as I recall. Viz was expected to be 6 inches or less. After he finished describing the conditions he said literally "I am pretty sure we can get in and out alive."

I called the dive trip. DM/Guide sounded relieved.

Too advanced = Stupid to even attempt it

 

[xyrandomyx]

What exactly is the purpose of labelling a dive/ site 'advanced'? Serious question. I'm wondering because I think it'd help in deciding what 'advanced' is. I just realised, though, that NWGratefulDiver actually asked for concrete examples of dives that we'd consider 'advanced'.

 

[TSandM]

Simply repeating the same basic dives over and over again will do nothing to move you to an advanced level of diving.

I disagree with this. It depends on where you set the bar. I did Fundies in our local mudhole, a site where I had done the majority of my diving. It is truly a beginner dive site, but functioning at the level where we were asked to function (which I look back on and shake my head, because it was SO basic) was not to me a beginner thing at all. I did a LOT of dives in that site and its neighbors (all beginning sites) asking myself for a higher level of performance, and it did a GREAT deal to advance me as a diver.

It is true that you won't learn how to work in current without diving in it; you won't learn surf entries by never doing any. But you can advance a great deal as a diver if you redefine the goals of the simple dives you are doing.

 

[boulderjohn]

I disagree with this. It depends on where you set the bar. I did Fundies in our local mudhole, a site where I had done the majority of my diving. It is truly a beginner dive site, but functioning at the level where we were asked to function (which I look back on and shake my head, because it was SO basic) was not to me a beginner thing at all. I did a LOT of dives in that site and its neighbors (all beginning sites) asking myself for a higher level of performance, and it did a GREAT deal to advance me as a diver.

It is true that you won't learn how to work in current without diving in it; you won't learn surf entries by never doing any. But you can advance a great deal as a diver if you redefine the goals of the simple dives you are doing.

I don't consider doing Fundies in any site or consciously striving to improve to be the same thing I was describing. Lots of divers do what this couple had done during their previous years of diving. They had gone to an easy site, blundered through the dive, surfaced, and been done with it. I doubt that their diving skills after about 20 dives were as good as they were the day after they were certified.