ICE DIVING COURSES

DRYSUIT DIVING
Drysuits provide a much greater degree of warmth and comfort in colder waters than a wetsuit both while diving and topside between dives. Drysuits are almost essential for any diver interested in pursuing deep diving, ice diving or with leadership aspirations where extended times in and around the water is necessary.

FULL FACE MASKS
Full face masks are specialized pieces of dive gear particularly well suited for diving in colder water, deeper mixed gas diving, underwater photography or filmmaking where modelsí faces are visible and any dives where underwater communications systems are useful for safety, instruction or collaboration.

ICE DIVER
The ice diver course provides an introduction to the specialized equipment, skills and knowledge necessary to dive safely under the ice.

ADVANCED ICE DIVER
The Advanced Ice Diver course continues to build the knowledge and comfort to conduct and lead more advanced dives under ice. The course provides divers with increased confidence and hands-on experience with every aspect of ice diving. Advanced ice diving skills are essential for those who plan to dive regularly under ice, to go beyond the 30-40 feet that typical ice dives are confined to and for those who wish to lead ice diving groups or ice dive without professional supervision. It is a leadership level course to handle potential ice diving contingencies both underwater and topside with confidence.

The Advanced Ice Diver course covers how to find wrecks and dive sites under the ice and how to determine the best location to make one or more holes. The course provides participants with the confidence to handle and isolate a free flow without surfacing or aborting the dive and to set up the dive site with stage bottles to further enhance safety. Emergency drills ranging from lost lines to handling hypothermia are practiced. Dive site preparation will be covered an indepth review of facilities that may be brought out onto the ice and logistical considerations to access more remote locations.

ARCTIC ICE DIVER
Diving in the arctic takes place under or around sea ice. The dynamics of moving ice create many new types of challenges, opportunities and safety considerations that must be taken into account to find interesting and unique dive sites, to gain access to sites through potentially very thick sea ice and to understand potential hazards unique to the ocean environment.