The PADI Cavern Diver Course

Can you see the light? If you dive within the light zone of a cave–the area near the cave entrance where natural light is always visible–you're in the cavern zone.

The Fun Part

The fun part is exploring secrets hidden in caverns around the world and having the knowledge and skills to do it correctly.

What You Learn

This is a challenging and very exciting course that includes four training dives over at least two days. During your first open water dive you'll practice line handling, reel use and emergency procedures without entering a cavern. But, for your next three dives, you're headed into the cavern, staying within the light zone and 40 metres/130 feet total distance from the surface. You learn about

• Cavern navigation and line protocols
• Planning, organization, techniques, problems and hazards of cavern diving
• Special equipment use, such as lights, guidelines, reels and redundant breathing systems
• Air sharing, disorientation, silting, line problems and other emergency procedures specific to cavern diving
• Silt prevention, buoyancy control, air management and emergency procedures
• Depth and distant limits for cavern diving

The Scuba Gear You Use

You use all the basic scuba gear plus some specialty gear for cavern diving. This is one of the few diving activities in which you won’t use your snorkel.

Prerequisites

You must be

• A PADI Advanced Open Water
• At least 18 years old

Your Next Adventure

The Peak Performance Buoyancy course will help you perfect your buoyancy skills for cavern diving. Many cavern and cave divers are also Enriched Air Nitrox certified so that they can enjoy more time exploring underwater. If you love cavern diving you may be interested in the Discover Tec Diving experience, which lets you try out basic technical diving equipment and skills to help you see if you want to learn more about going beyond recreational diving limits.