SSI WRECK DIVER COURSE

Do you want to explore New Zealand’s wrecks?

Perhaps you served on one of our Leander Class Frigates (Canterbury, Waikato or Wellington) which were sunk for divers  after they were decommissioned and want to revisit your old work place now it is 30 metres below?

You want to visit the historic Rainbow Warrior that was sunk in the 80’s protesting the testing of Nuclear weapons in the Pacific?

What about the mystery of the running aground and the strange events that took place directly after the incident of the Russian cruise liner Mikhail Lermontov in the Marlborough Sounds?

Or perhaps you are getting ready for an international trip , like ours to Coron in the Philippines where there are wrecks to dive?

Well our SSI Wreck courses are a great place to start your wreck training and experience. 

SSI Basic Wreck Diver 

Learn the skills to safely explore the outside of a shipwreck safely, looking for points of interest, hazards and potential penetration points to use in planning and how to navigate around it and safely back to your exit point.

SSI Advanced Wreck Diver

Learn the skills to begin exploring inside of a wreck, planning the dive so you stay within the NDL limits,  using guide lines to navigate your way in and out safely down to a maximum of 30 metres staying within the natural light zone.

We combine our Basic and Advanced courses, so that you gain the full SSI Advanced Wreck certification.  We run our courses over a minimum of 6 dives as our wrecks are laying in 30m of water and so we have limited No Decompression Limit times even on 32% Nitrox and therefore limited dive time to get all of the skills mastered.  Most dives are about 35 to 45 minutes long, so 4 dives are definitely not enough for you to master the skills.

Our local ships that we use for training sit on the sand on around the 30m mark with their highest remaining structure at around 15m. This means anyone wanting to dive them should have at least their Advanced Open Water certification and ideally Enriched Air Nitrox to give them a little bit longer down there.

We aim to run a 3 dive day, one Friday per month to the Waikato wreck for our Wreck courses and a 2 dive day one Sunday per month as part of our Advanced Adventurer courses so there is plenty of opportunity to go wreck diving once you have finished the course.  Due to the exposed location of the Waikato we do have to be flexible with running these courses.

Over the course some of the things you will learn are:

• Spotting hazards, points of interest and potential penetration points
• Map part of the outside of the wreck. You will use your maps and any available schematics to plan penetration routes within your training levels.
• Practise using reels and lights to safely penetrate a wreck and communicate with a buddy
• Look at progressive penetration methods
• Practise to carry, stage and retrieve a bail-out cylinder safely for the team to use in a low on air or out of air situation.
• Finning techniques required for diving inside a wreck

Currently, the course runs over two Fridays, with 3 dives on each day.  Alternatively 3 days of 2 dives per day.

Be warned, wreck diving can be extremely addictive.