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Upcoming events: Visions in the Sea Underwater Image Festival Learn to dive in 2009 weekends or mid-week View all events... |
Precision Buoyancy *As featured at the London Dive Show* |
Learn to Dive! Book your NAUI Scuba Diver Course now... |
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Please note that Ocean Optics and Mavericks diving will be closed on Saturday 13th of
June 2009. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
If you've come to the Mavericks Diving website via the feature article in Diver Magazine by Steve, Andrew and Sean, welcome! You might also have caught our presentations at The London Dive Show. We'd welcome your comments on the article or talks and any stories, thoughts or tips you have about buoyancy control. If you'd like to be involved in future projects, then please send us an e mail with a bit of information about yourself and diving background. Or, better yet, visit us and take the tour at our base at Underwater Studios Movie Tank.
Precision Buoyancy Control Courses
You can find out more about our Precision Buoyancy Courses here. Courses are run with a maximum of two students per instructor. Normal start time is around 09:30 and we finish when you've had enough. 20:00 is the current record. Cost is £199.00 per person.
Buoyancy Challenges For Groups
If you would like us to organise a Buoyancy Challenge Event for your club, diving centre or a group of friends at Underwater Studios the cost is £900.00 for a full day. That includes two of our instructors to run the event in the water. Realistically, around 30 divers can compete in a day. We would ask you to provide your own judges and two designated helpers to assist with the smooth running of the event. There is a cafe on site where you can enjoy refreshments and socialise.
Buoyancy Challenge Presentations
If you would like a presentation on buoyancy control for recreational divers that covers the work we did for Diver Magazine, then please get in touch. Presentations take about an hour and are based on the talks we gave at the London Dive Show. The presentations do emphasise safety issues and can be both controversial and provocative. Our basic fee for making the presentation is £100.00 plus travelling costs we incur and overnight stays if required. We will always try to keep these expenses to a minimum. If you also want a talk at the same event on improving your underwater photography with compact cameras, we'll do that for free.
Mavericks Diving: Personalised Instruction From Steve Warren and Andrew Pugsley.
articles on choosing and using divers' life support apparatus
find out about our courses, why we teach the way we do, and read safety articles
be inspired: the underwater world holds adventures of infinte nature...
the team, the shop, the latest news and events
Welcome to Mavericks Diving. We offer a very different approach to other diving centres. The best endorsement of our expertise is the work we do with the diving media. When we make a presentation to a packed auditorium at a dive show hundreds of divers get to hear and challenge our findings. When we research and publish a safety feature in a major diving magazine, thousands of our peers stand ready to judge us. When we teach you to dive or you join one of our continuing education programs, it's usually just you and one other person. After all, our audience and readers might give us their undivided attention, but underwater it's our undivided attention you should expect. It's our knowledge and experience that you tap into when you join our personalised scuba courses that will give you an edge.
We're not interested in offering mediocre diver instruction. We have always strived to offer the best quality training we can. We were the first instructors in Europe, way back in 1992, to recognise the contributions the Diamond Reef Buoyancy Program could make towards helping divers learn precision buoyancy control skills. Skills that prevent accidents and save lives. It was only years later that major training agencies finally brought in their own buoyancy courses. Some still haven't. We've invested heavily in professional radiophones so that we can coach our divers by voice, providing immediate feedback underwater to help them learn and refine complex skills. Think of any hazardous activity, like driving, where your instructor teaches you only by gestures. We couldn't understand why it was a requirement to use a CPR mannequin for teaching first aid on dry land, but okay to just pretend to administer rescue breaths in the much more difficult scenario of a diving accident. So we use Simulaid rescue mannequins designed to let you practice resuscitation in the water.
We believe our pool facilities are the best in the country. We're based at Underwater Studios, a dedicated movie tank. The tank is spacious - 10 x 12 metres and fully 6 metres deep. The depth makes it possible for us to teach key skills including buoyancy control, rescue lifts, delayed surface marker buoy deployment and dry suit use to an exceptional standard. We can also create waves and place boats on the surface. All of this means that the transition to using these skills, for real, in open water, is that much more effective. You'll also notice that we've chosen to align ourselves with one of the oldest and most respected diver training agencies in the world - indeed the National Association of Underwater Instructors trains and certifies every one of NASA's astronauts. And if a NAUI scuba course is a little more demanding than some others - well that's why we've chosen to become NAUI instructors.
For us diver education is about sharing information. Our learn to dive course is, we believe the most comprehensive in the UK. Our precision buoyancy course and follow up workshops are unique. The underwater photography programs we have developed with Ocean Optics' Mark Koekemoer are officially approved by Inon and Fuji, two leading manufacturers of underwater camera equipment. Our marine biology courses for divers were created for us and are taught personally by the marine ecologist and journalist, Jamie Watts. Mavericks Diving is all about raising the bar. And, no we don't believe we were created in a beam of white light - we're still learning ourselves!
We hope you'll give us a try.
Andrew (AJ) and Steve.