Reflecting the Advanced Open Water Course

The Advanced Open Water - often called the Advanced Adventurer or simply the AOW or AA program - is one of the most misunderstood steps in scuba training by divers and professionals. Many divers arrive expecting a dramatic transformation: deeper dives, new skills, and the feeling of “leveling up.” At the same time, the dive industry often treats this program casually, sometimes as a quick add-on rather than as a meaningful educational milestone. This article aims to clear the noise.

Below, we’ll break down what the program should really include, how to choose your adventure dives, what is required, what’s worth adding, and how a professional dive center approaches this training in a way that actually builds better divers - not just certified ones.

Understanding the AOW Structure

The Advanced Open Water program is built around five adventure dives, each introducing you to a specialty area of diving. Two are mandatory (Deep and Navigation), while the remaining three are chosen based on interest, environment, and long-term diving goals, or the diving center's prioritization.

A thoughtful center should aim to make you a well-rounded diver, comfortable diving in different sites and under different conditions. You should be a little timid of a diving center offering you a menu of "specialties" that sound cool and flashy, but have little substance to them. Think about every specialty offered - each dive should be a taste of the real deal - giving you real tools and knowledge - and should qualify as the first step in a full scuba diving specialty course of the same subject.

A Good AOW Program

A solid Advanced Open Water program isn’t just five random adventure dives—it’s a structured progression that builds real capability. A good program blends required skills with dives that strengthen your control, awareness, and confidence in the water. You should come out of it feeling like you understand more, think more, and move better—not just that you’ve “done your AOW.”

A well-designed program focuses on dives that:

• Improve your safety and in-water decision-making

• Prepare you for the environments you’re actually going to dive in

• Challenge you in a measured, supportive way

A professional instructor won’t just offer choices; they’ll shape the program around an advanced diver's needs and the local conditions, making sure every dive has a clear purpose and objectives, and contributes to your growth as a diver.

The Must-Do Dives: Deep & Navigation

Deep Diving Specialty is essential because it gives you the supervised experience of going beyond 18 meters while learning how depth affects buoyancy, breathing, and narcosis. It’s often the most eye-opening dive in the program. Many dive sites, like ship wrecks, deeper reefs, macro sites, and more, so being able to dive to 30 meters does unlock many dive site features.

Navigation builds independence. It tightens your understanding of spatial awareness, natural and compass-based navigation, and gives you the confidence to find your way in different environments, even without a guide. An advanced certification allows a diver to dive without professional guidance, therefore, building confidence in navigating and leading dives.

Together, these two dives are the backbone of the AOW program—they’re not just required; they’re foundational.

Recommended Adventure Dives

Some adventure dives consistently add real value, depending on location and conditions:

• Buoyancy / Peak Performance Buoyancy – Sharpens trim, movement, and air consumption. Beneficial for every diver. For us at SKA, buoyancy control is really the core of everything scuba diving. We include it in our advanced program and work with the students at the current level of their buoyancy control.
  

• Drift – Great for areas with current; helps you stay streamlined and relaxed. Currents may arise even unexpectedly, and are pretty common in the Philippines and most dive sites around the world. Drift diving, when done properly, is really fun, but without the know-how, the dive can turn chaotic.
  

• Night – Builds comfort, communication, and calmness in low visibility. Night dives are exciting, and in our opinion, you should definitely start doing them.
  

• Search and Recovery – Practical and fun, especially if you like problem-solving underwater. This specialty can be interesting if you're into more advanced courses down the line, like rescue or divemaster. Search is a great addition to skills learned in more advanced specialties.
  

These are the dives that build skills you’ll use across many future dives - not just in a specific environment.

Less Recommended (Context Matters)

Some adventure dives look appealing on paper but may offer little skill development at the AOW level, unless you’re in the right environment or have a particular interest. Examples include:

• Fish ID – Interesting but limited as a skill-learning dive. Also, teaching quality tends to be low. However, if taught by a specialist, Fish ID can be fascinating. Otherwise, you can pretty much learn this "specialty" on your own - online.
  

• Digital Imaging / Underwater Photography – Useful only if you already have a camera and specific goals. Moreover, this is one of the things worth learning on your own, with experience. But, if you have an established underwater photographer teaching you, you might want to consider it as part of your advanced.
  

• Boat – Often redundant if you’re already doing boat dives regularly. Most diving centers include it in their Advanced program just to meet the minimum standard required to complete it. Boat diving is normal, and you'll learn what you need when you need it.
  

• Computer – for us, under SDI, we teach diving with a computer on day 1 of the open-water diving course. Even if you didn't learn how to dive with it, a short Google search and a few tips from any diving professional in any dive shop will suffice.
  

• Wreck – Most recreational wreck specialties don't include penetration, therefore don't add much added value.
  

These aren’t “bad,” but they shouldn’t be prioritized over skill-building dives unless they genuinely match your interests and are taught by a genuine expert.

Conclusion

A solid Advanced Open Water program shouldn’t feel like ticking off five separate dives. When taught well, it becomes a holistic experience where skills naturally reinforce each other. Your buoyancy gets refined during navigation, your navigation sharpens again at night, and your awareness grows with every new environment.

The real surprise? Most divers finish the program realizing that “advanced” isn’t about going deeper; it’s about seeing how all the pieces of diving finally start to connect. That moment of everything clicking together - that’s what the AOW should truly deliver.