OVERVIEW AND QUALIFICATIONS
This is a certification course for certified scuba divers who desire to assume greater rescue capabilities during diving activities. The training emphasizes accident supervision and management with practical applications in open water. This course is designed specifically to provide the knowledge and skills necessary to:
- Help prevent diving accidents.
- Recognize life-threatening diving situations.
- Recognize life-threatening diving situations.
- Effectively perform in-water rescue/assist techniques and procedures.
- Correctly manage rescue assistants during and after rescues.
- Provide immediate, effective post-rescue aid.
- Correctly manage a diving emergency with adjustments for local variants. Graduates are considered competent to perform assists and rescues in aquatic situations so long as the situation approximates one for which they have been trained.
Get Started
The NAUI Rescue Scuba Diver and NAUI Advanced Rescue Scuba Diver courses are for certified divers who desire additional training or orientation to a variety of diving sites and conditions. Divers must be a minimum of 15 years of age to enroll in a NAUI Rescue Scuba Diver course or 17 years of age to enroll in the NAUI Advanced Rescue Scuba Diver course. All participants must be in good health and be previously certified as a NAUI Scuba Diver or equivalent.
What’s Next?
ontinue your training and learning by enrolling in a NAUI Master Diver or NAUI First Aid course to develop additional expertise and comfort in the water
COURSE DETAILS
Academic: E-learning/Classroom
Practical Application:
Open Water Dives: minimum 4 dives
REQUIREMENTS – SKILLS
- Swim 207m yards (225 yards) nonstop, any stroke.
- Survival swim for 15 minutes.
- Recover 4.5 kg (10 pounds) from a depth of about 3m (10 ft.)
- Swim 412m (450 yards) nonstop, breathing from snorkel.
- Bring another diver simulating unconsciousness to the surface from a depth of about 3m (10 ft.).
- Using proper techniques, perform water entries and exits, surface dives, surface swimming, clearing the snorkel, ditching the weight system, buoyancy control, underwater swimming and surfacing.
- Assemble equipment, make adjustments, don equipment, and perform pre-dive equipment inspections.
- In turn, at the surface remove and replace mask, snorkel, fins, weight system and scuba unit.
- In turn, underwater, remove, replace and clear mask and regulator.
- Comfortably breathe from a regulator without wearing a mask for two minutes.
- Buddy breathe, and share air using an alternate air source.
- Demonstrate surface use of the BC and the ability to hover underwater.
- Perform a Scuba Diver Assist (see “Selected Skills”) of another scuba diver 91m (100 yards).
- Rescue Equipment. Demonstrate the use of rescue floats, rescue lines and backboards.
- Problem ID and Resolution. In open water, identify the given problem
- Lost Diver. As a simulation of a lost diver exercise in open water, locate an object within four minutes at a depth of about 6m (20 ft.). Rescuer must be able to observe, from a distance of approximately 46m (50 yards), the exact location where the object is dropped and may enlist the assistance of two other divers to locate the object. Underwater visibility is to be at least two meters (7 feet)
- Scuba Diver Assist. At the surface in open water, unassisted and equipped as a skin or scuba diver, assist and transport 46m (50 yards) to an exit point a scuba diver simulating exhaustion.
- Exit Assist. At the surface in open water, unassisted and equipped as a skin or scuba diver, assist a scuba diver simulating exhaustion from the water after reaching a shore or beach, and a boat or dock.
- Retrieval from Depth (skin). In open water, unassisted and equipped as a skin diver, locate and bring to the surface from approximately 4.6m (15 ft.) of water a mock unconscious scuba diver. Underwater visibility is to be at least 2.1m (7 ft.).
- Scuba Diver Rescue.
- Diver Extrication.
- Rescue from Depth (scuba). In open water, equipped as a scuba diver, rescue from a depth of approximately 9m (30 ft.) and transport 46m (50 yards) to shore or boat, a submerged simulated unconscious non-breathing scuba diver. Upon reaching the surface, simulated rescue breathing is to be performed for the remainder of the exercise. Simultaneously direct two additional divers to assist with the rescue.
- First Aid. At an open water site, demonstrate emergency first aid procedures for a diver.
- Accident Management Plan.
E-LEARNING / CLASS ROOM EXAMINATION
PREREQUISITES
- Age. Minimum is 17 years by the water phase of the course.
- Certification/Experience/Knowledge. Certification as a NAUI Advanced Open Water Scuba Diver or the equivalent is required. The instructor is to ensure adequate student knowledge and capability before any open water training and shall use skill or other evaluations to do so. One open water dive (which does not count toward the minimum number of dives required for the course) may be used as a screening and evaluation dive. This is not required when the student’s diving proficiencies are well known to the instructor.
- Equipment. Students shall furnish and be responsible for the care and maintenance of their own diving equipment. The instructor shall initially assist the student in checking all student gear to ensure it is adequate and in proper working order.
