Instructor Training College, Francia

Navigation is part of every dive and the better you are at it, the less time is lost for swimming to reach
the intended location of your dive. The course covers natural navigation and compass navigation and is
based on the skills that are covered in the “Adventures in Diving Manual”. The course takes two days.
As part of the course we teach you the use of a tool called Scuba-Sextant (sometimes called Nav
Finder). This tool allows you to swim more complicated pattern than triangles and squares and is what
dive professionals use to make maps of dive sites.

Courses in which you spent far more time in the water than in the
classroom are called practical specialties. Your instructor will guide you
through the process of learning by doing. The skills you learn will come in
handy during many of your future dives. For some of these courses, the
College does not teach the “standard” program that is available on most
location, but has opted for the more challenging Advanced version of the
specialty.

The course that can probably create the biggest change in your skill and
comfort level after completing an entry level diver course is the Peak
Performance Buoyancy course. You will be amazed by the differences. Your
control over your position in the water, your freedom of movement and your
air consumption can change dramatically.

Taking pictures of the things you observe underwater is a
rewarding experience. It allows you to enjoy the dive you
made again when you are at home, to share your
experiences with other divers and to show non-divers the
fascinating underwater world. It is no wonder that more
than one in three divers bring a digital underwater camera
with them when they go on vacation. The behavior of light
underwater makes photography more challenging than
taking pictures on land. Without a proper introduction, you
risk that your pictures lack color and that you find white
spots all over your picture. Also a correct exposure of a
picture can proof difficult. To overcome these problems we
offer digital underwater photography courses.

Most divers are certified as Nitrox diver and there are good reasons for that. During dive vacations you
will want to spend as much time as possible underwater. If you make more than one dive in a day, at
some point the no-decompression limit is going to limit the pleasure – Nitrox does exactly what you
want in such a situation. Nitrox extents the time you have available underwater. To do this, the cylinder
is filled with another mix between Nitrogen and Oxygen. It is the lower Nitrogen content that increases
the available dive time.

After completing the Open Water Diver course, you know how to handle yourself
underwater. You can observe and enjoy the underwater world. More experienced
divers engage in all sorts of activities while they are underwater. The Adventures in
Diving program allows you to try some of these activities to allow you to find out
what you like most. A second objective is that we keep you busy with the activities –
this is done with the intent to draw your attention away from general diving skills.
This helps you to develop the habit of taking care of your buoyancy and staying
close to your buddy as an automatism.

Learning by doing – that is how a diver course
works. You need to be introduced in the
theoretical aspects of diving as well. Depending
on your wishes – do you want to participate in
supervised dives only, or do you want to become
an autonomous diver – there is a certain number
of sessions to complete. Some of the sessions
concern theory, but most are what you came for –
diving in a pool or in the sea.

For people who want to try diving, we provide a program that
assures a positive experience. We spent about one hour to
introduce you to the equipment you are going to be using and
explain what awaits you once you are in the water. As soon as
this is done, we take you in our pool. The experience in the
pool is important for you to get used to the sensation of
breathing underwater as well as the feeling of being
completely weightless – without this experience in the pool,
you will not be able to enjoy a dive in the sea, which would be
a pity.