PADI Search and Recovery Diver Course in Phuket

Search and Recovery: Have you ever accidentally dropped something in the water?

If you are like us then you probably have! This PADI Search and Recovery Specialty Diver Course will teach you effective ways of searching for objects and safely recover them. You do this by conducting a Search Pattern and then by bringing them back on the surface.

What size is it? Small or big? Are you can carry it by yourself, or do you need to rig a lift bag to safely bring the object back to the surface in a buddy team?

What will you learn?

The PADI Search and Recovery Course will teach how to evaluate the conditions and other variables. Once done you will then need to use the correct search pattern for the object. Once found, you will then rig a Lift Bag and safely bring the object back to the surface.

First you start by reading your PADI Search and Recovery Specialty Diver manual. And as usual, complete the appropriate Knowledge Reviews. Your Indepth PADI Instructor will review these with you before you do your dives.

Some of the topics covered include:

• The careful planning, organizing, problems and possible of hazards of Search and Recovery diving
• Limited-visibility diving, underwater navigation techniques and Search Patterns
• Correct techniques and safety considerations, including the use of lines and reel handling
• Correct techniques and safety considerations for using various lifting devices, most commonly Lift Bags

The PADI Search and Recovery Diver course takes place over two days with four dives. Although for fun we have scheduled 6 dives for you. The first dive will be "Check Out" dive for your Instructor to get to know you, and you him / her. You can also make practice some Search Patterns or some simple skills if you want. This is then followed by your 4 Search and Recovery Training Dives. That leaves you another extra dive. You can either to practice more Search and Recovery Skills, or you could even just have a celebratory “fun dive” with your PADI Instructor.

Underwater Search and Recovery Training

In the water you will start with some basic search patterns. These include a "Circular Search" for small objects. The U-Patterns, Expanding Squares and Jack Stay search patterns for larger objects. From there we look at what you would actually evaluate and what Search Pattern to use. Finally how you would organize the actual dive itself depending on all these variables. You will learn techniques for searching in limited visibility and expand on your Underwater Navigation techniques. After all this builds on what you learnt in the PADI Advanced Course and the PADI Underwater Navigator Course.

We will teach you how to tie various common knots. These include at minimum the Bow Line, Two Half Hitches and Sheet Bend. Once you have learnt those we can go onto how to actually rig and raise a lift bag. Once you have mastered these, you will then put all the skills together and practice actual underwater searches. On these you will be looking for various objects of various different shapes, sizes and weight. Once found you will then safely bringing them up to the surface with the appropriate lifting device.

The dive sites around Phuket such as Racha Yai offer great training grounds for the PADI Search and Recovery Specialty Diver Course. They provide flat bottoms and good visibility on which to learn the initial techniques. After this we make the course a little more challenging by moving to dive sites with reduced visibility and more depth. This gives you the chance to search when you can’t see everything.

All in all this course prepares you to begin to find things underwater and is one of the most fun and rewarding PADI courses.

Now let’s go and find some Gold!