Just got my Advanced Open Water certification!

Complete with Night Dive (not my favorite), Fish ID (pretty cool) and Underwater Photography (definitely my favorite!)

Congrats!

Congrats...the first night dive can be a little spooky, but what you possible might see is truly amazing.

Good job on your AOW.

JudasFM, good for you. Now go dive a bunch and apply your new experiences as you grow into a better diver with each additional dive. I suggest you focus on navigation and buoyancy and trim as you perfect your skills. However, I love to identify sea creatures and take their pictures and videos too!
DivemasterDennis

Thanks everyone

DivemasterDennis:

JudasFM, good for you. Now go dive a bunch and apply your new experiences as you grow into a better diver with each additional dive. I suggest you focus on navigation and buoyancy and trim as you perfect your skills.

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I plan to I loved the navigation dive; it was the most fun out of all the skills I had to do for my AOW I'm not sure if I'll go back for another night dive though; apart from it being nerve-wracking, I didn't see a thing apart from one lonely little parrot fish and an octopus. (Okay, seeing the octopus was cool; we have two resident at the Mole dive site, but they're usually coiled up in their little lairs).

Next on my list is Rescue Diver, but I want to get a LOT more dives under my belt before I sign on for that course (not to mention the dive center I go to won't let divers onto a course unless they're 100% confident that you're able to handle it). At the moment it's still taking me a while to perfect my own buoyancy, let alone rescue divers in distress I dive a couple of times a week, so I'll probably talk to the center about Rescue Diver in the New Year, when I'll have another 20+ dives under my belt and be more familiar with all the dive sites.

Yes, Rescue for sure. There are varying views on when to do it. I did mine with 26 dives and probably would've gotten a bit more from the course had I been more experienced. BUT, the skills I learned then are still the same, so you just practise them. Even if you are not great at the skills when you do them, at least you know what they are and can use them if something does happen. Personally, I would take the course when you are quite good regarding buoyancy and are comfortable with the basic aspects of diving. Your shop of course, sets their own rules, and I have read that Rescue courses vary tremendously in how demanding they are. I found that my course wasn't really very demanding physically (even at age 53), but very much so mentally. Good luck with it.

Congrats

Sent from the deep blue sea.

JudasFm:

Complete with Night Dive (not my favorite), Fish ID (pretty cool) and Underwater Photography (definitely my favorite!)

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Way to go. Sounds like you're totally addicted now. Mua ha ha ha.

Congrats and keep up the good work.