Night diving – Page 6 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Newsletter: Hout Bay to Mozambique

Hi divers

What we have been up to

Divers waiting to enter the water on the floating jetty

Some of the garbage that was retrieved from the harbour

For those of you that did not make it to the ocean last weekend I can truly say you missed out big time!! The OMSAC clean-up dive on Saturday morning was really enjoyable with some amazing articles being removed from Hout Bay harbour. True to form OMSAC ran an excellent event with everything happening on schedule. After the clean-up we dived the Aster wreck. We dived on Nitrox to maximise our bottom time and penetrated the forward hold. Goot and Gerard were doing their Nitrox specialty dives, Goot had a taste of wreck penetration, and Cecil was also test diving his new twin tank setup so we had a ‘’busy’’ dive.

Back on dry land we waited out the sunset and then went back out to the Aster for a night dive. The conditions were great, visibility 10 -12 metres and cold water (11 degrees) on the bottom. Night dives to the deeper wrecks are more challenging than shore night dives so a big well done to the guys and girls that joined.

Goot, Tami, Tony, Clare, Gerard and Cecil, ready for a night dive on the Aster

Talks

On Tuesday evening we attended a talk and slide show at Dive Action. Barry had done some diving in a fjord in Norway and recounted the trip with a lot of info and photos of the dive centre there and the wrecks. He also talked us through the logistics of diving far from home with a few hundred kilograms of dive gear. As you know I have absolutely no knowledge of rebreathers so if you want to know more about diving with a re-breather then Barry is the man to see.

The Fernedale and the Parat side by side

As you can see in this photo (courtesy of Gulen Dive Centre, kindly shared with us by Sarah from the Dive Action team), the visibility in the fjords is something else. It was taken at around 30 metres and the wreck on the right sits on the sand at over 55 metres.

This evening we attended a talk at the Save Our Seas Shark Centre by George Branch… He is one of the authors of the Two Oceans book and is an almost legendary figure in South African marine biology. The talks at SOSSC are always very good and are always ocean related so you should make an effort to attend a few… You are never too old to learn something new!!! Visit their facebook page and like them and this way you will be informed of their activities. Their page is constantly updated with some stunning photos and lots of info on sharks.

Hyperbaric chamber

Clare and I were taken on a tour of the hyperbaric medical facility in the Kingsbury Hospital in Claremont today. It is the only chamber of its kind in Cape Town and is used for many forms of medical treatments not related to diving, but should you have a problem on a dive and get DCS, this is the place you will go! This centre is also home to one of the most respected diving doctors in South Africa. As a diver you should have DAN Medical Insurance and you should know where the nearest chamber is, how to get there and who to call. All of this information should be in your log book. Their website is here. We will post a detailed report of this visit on the blog soon. This is a fully equipped medical facility and a lot different to the chamber we did our 50 metre chamber dive in!

What we are going to get up to

Training

Saturday is pool day and if you want to join and play with your gear and buoyancy text me before 2pm Friday. The cost to scuba dive in the pool (if you’re not on course) is R50, and if you just want to swim it’s R7. We are still busy with Deep and Nitrox Specialties which we will continue with early Sunday morning, launching out of Hout Bay at 7.30am. The boat takes 14 and we are already confirmed for 10 people so text me quickly if you are in.

After the boat dive we will move to False Bay and then do dive 3 & 4 for a few Open Water students. If the conditions are good we will try the Clan Stuart or A Frame. The visibility in the bay at the moment is 10 – 15 metres and despite some southeaster for the next two day I doubt it will do too much harm so diving will be good.

Scubapro Day – 1 October

Scubapro are having a ScubaPro Day in the Simon’s Town yacht basin on 1 October. They will allow you to test dive the latest gear from their range. There will be food, drinks and goodie bags plus lots of divers and other kinds of people. Boat dives are going to cost R100 and R25 gets you a goodie bag and registration at the event. I have booked 12 places on two dives on the boat, big brother to this boat.

Ruby Runner's little cousin, spotted in Germany — Ruby Runner’s little cousin, spotted in Germany

If you want to participate you need to book and you need to do this soon. Boat dives at R100 don’t come round too often so book this week or lose out. You will need to book and pay by Tuesday next week for this event. The dives are at 8.00am and 2.00pm.

Travels

There is a trip to Mozambique on the weekend 4-6 of November. It is a five dive/three night package that starts at R1850. You will need to mail me for more info as it is a trip shared with a dive centre in Durban and will need some quick decisions.

Reminders

A diver is currently in jail in Cape Town for diving without a permit… Don’t let it be you… Get a permit if you don’t have one.
Book for the boat for Sunday and October 1 (ScubaPro Day) NOW!

Bye for now,

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Introducing… Lady Long Beach!

Steve and his hard-working team at Pisces Divers in Glencairn have been labouring for a few weekends now on their artificial reef at Long Beach. I finally had an opportunity to check it out on a dive with Tony, Tami, Keren, Nils and Corne, and was extremely impressed by their work so far. Check out this awesome contraption to transport breeze blocks – this is ingenuity!

Awesome inner tube transport contraption

The main feature (or hostess, if you will) of the reef is Lady Long Beach, who I think used to live in Erika and Steve’s garden. She looks much happier in the sea! We did speak to another diving instructor who said that some students of his came across her on a night dive, just after she’d been placed in the water, and almost jumped out of their wetsuits to see a “wee girlie” (he’s Scottish) standing calmly on the sand, illuminated by their torches!

Recent additions include a large plant pot (which we’ve taken to calling the bird bath) – I think this could be an excellent place to hide, if you’re small enough… And a very impressively constructed, gently curving wall of concrete breeze blocks, held together by cable ties.

The "bird bath", with a large klipfish on its base at the right

We are so looking forward to seeing how this develops… Artificial reefs are a wonderful habitat for fish and other creatures, and this one is sure to be a popular diver attraction at Long Beach. It’s located 25 metres north of the seaward end of the pipeline… Go check it out!

Newsletter: Diving and surfing

Hello divers

What would a diving newsletter be without a weather rant. RANT. Big swells, rain and a fair bit of wind have hampered diving the last week or so. The surfers have had some amazing waves at Dungeons, huge is a better way of putting it. There has been a fair amount of northerly wind so the visibility at Long Beach yesterday was a good 10 metres and the water was 14 degrees. The weekend looks windy and a huge swell will again pass by but False Bay should be okay for a few dives. We are diving the Smits wrecks on Saturday deepish 35 meters and then going to Roman Rock. Sunday we hope to do shore entries providing the wind holds off.

Clare and I attended an interesting talk at the Save Our Seas Shark Centre last night on the bull shark research program being run in the Breede river. This was the third talk in the series and they all cover different topics, shark related. The The talks we have attended at Dive Action – about diving medicine and the sardine run, amongst other things, have also been very good so if you are keen to join us for any of them mail me and I will keep you on the list for future talks. If you have not visited their site do it now here

Sadly there have been a few fatalities around the world in recent weeks and the shark is once again taking the heat. The Russian and the Seychelles governments are on a “hunt them down” campaign. A marine biologist friend of mine in the Seychelles tells me people are behaving like lunatics. Closer to home, the Plett incident has thankfully not become a frenzy as yet and I think this is largely due to the fact there are several organisations, like Save Our Seas, doing a lot of work on awareness campaigns. I find it constantly amazing that every time there is a shark attack the media will say it was a great white without a shred of proof.

This weekend we are running Nitrox (Enriched Air) courses, Deep Specialty and Advanced diver while on the boat and will continue with Open Water diver courses on Sunday. We are starting new Open Water students next weekend and a new Advanced diver course. There is always space for you!!! I would also like to do some night diving soon as it has been a while since the last one. Come and test your navigational skills by moonlight and see what the ocean keeps hidden by day.

We are trying to decide where to go for our next trip, the options are Durban and Aliwal Shoal, Sodwana Bay or southern Mozambique. Text me your preference, it does not have to mean you are coming with, it will just give me an indication of what most of you on this mailing list would prefer.

A reminder that if you want to join us on 17 September cleaning up Hout Bay harbour (underwater, of course!) with OMSAC, visit the OMSAC home page to get registration details.

I have no idea of how many of you read the blog but many of you feature on the blog. Just type your first name into the search field in the top right hand corner and sit back and enjoy the fame!!! Should you not appear it means you have not done enough diving in the last year… And you all know who you are…

And, finally, just a reminder about your MPA permits. If you don’t have one, go and get one before you come diving. At the Post Office. Do it!

Be good, have fun, and get wet.

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog
Diving is addictive!

Sea life: Doublesash butterflyfish

Tony first found doublesash butterflyfish at Long Beach in Simon’s Town. They look as though they belong in tropical water, and indeed are related to the butterflyfish one sees further north in Sodwana and Mozambique. They are brightly coloured and so exciting to see!

Two doublesash butterflyfish under the wreck at Long Beach

They mostly eat tubeworm tentacles, and (our observations bear this out) adults are often seen in pairs. These two live under one of the wrecks at Long Beach. I photographed them on a night dive. Tony has seen juveniles further south at Long Beach in front of the Admiral’s Beach – one of them the size of a R2 coin.

This short video clip was filmed by Tony on a very surgy day. You can see the wreck moving up and down vigorously. Watch out for the barehead gobies and for the klipfish who comes to assert his ownership of the territory. The butterflyfish turns on his side occasionally to get out from underneath the boat!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VodH3Enevpw&w=540]

Newsletter: Crystal clear water

Hello everyone

I can confirm, with pictures, that the clean winter water has arrived and to top it all the water has held its temperature well and we had 14 degrees on the weekend. Cape Town is an all year round dive spot and winter is by far the best season as the southeaster that blows in summer is the cause of many cancellations in the dive industry. Winter also opens up the possibility for dive sites like Sunny Cove near Fishoek, the North Battery Pipeline near Simon’s Town and Windmill Beach. Windmill is an amazing dive but seldom if ever with good viz in summer.

Past dives

On Saturday we started with a dive to the SAS Fleur. A navy frigate scuttled in 1965, it lies on the sand in 42 metres of water. The site is out in the middle of False Bay close to Seal Island. The water was so clean that at 20 metres if you looked up you could see the dive boats on the surface and if you looked down you could see the wreck. I had no idea False Bay could get so clean.

We dived the Clan Stuart wreck and A Frame on Sunday and the pictures below tell it all. Clean water with great visibilty.

Whilst on the wreck Clare found a small onefin electric ray. Besides give us a chance for a few good photos before burying itself in the sand I also had a chance at making a short video and discovered that as soon as I came within a metre of the ray my screen developed a series of lines on the video and these cleared when I moved away. I moved closer again and had the same thing, so clearly they send out some strong electrical charge… They are called numbfish locally, I now understand why!

Boat dives

The weather this weekend does not look as great as it should and Grant will only launch tomorrow and Sunday. Tomorrow’s weather looks really great so take the day off and get some aquatic therapy. Remember with boat dives the spots fill up very quickly so it is important we book early.

Training

I am often accused of not being very aggressive with marketing of training courses. When I started diving I remained an Open Water diver for 10 years before I did another course and this was partly due to the feelings I always had that the dive schools I dived with tried to shove a course down my throat every time they saw me and every time I went diving. I resisted this and had done almost 100 dives before I did an Advanced diver course. Now that I make a living from this industry I am meant to be pushy in selling courses but I still feel that divers should make the decision to do a course on their own. There is a link at the bottom of this mail to our blog where you can read all about the different Specialties and types of diving if you want to know more or you can just mail me with any questions.

Once you feel its time to do something then I will be there like a shot to tell you what I believe the next best step to be given the type of diving you enjoy, until then I really enjoy the fun dives I do with many of my ex-students and casual diving is also very appealing to me as I can then take my camera. So if you just want to get some diving done to expand on your experience then the casual shore dives, night dives and boat dives we do every week are a good way to do this.

Blue gas flame nudibranch inside the swim through at A Frame

Yours in diving

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Diving in an MPA

A couple of weekends ago I picked up a hard copy of this brochure (PDF) at the Paddlers shop in Simons Town. It’s the Marine Recreational Activity Information Brochure published by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. I wish that more poachers would read it! It has information pertaining to the regulations governing scuba divers, anglers, jet skiers, aquarium keepers, rock lobster, and abalone.

The map at left is from this brochure (PDF), which details all the MPAs along our coastline. Certain areas are restricted zones, which means that NO fishing is allowed there at all. I am always totally delighted when the skipper slows the dive boat to a crawl to inform a clueless (or willfully criminal) kayaker or fishing boat that they’re fishing in a no take zone! This usually happens on the way to Smitswinkel Bay in the Castle Rock restricted zone. Research has shown that restricted zones have dramatically positive impacts on fish populations – the difference between fish and marine life populations just inside and just outside these areas is very dramatic.

I can assure you, from diving in these areas, that even though the policing of restricted zones leaves MUCH to be desired, the experience of diving in one is an absolute pleasure for the most part. Rich dive sites like Partridge Point are testimony to this.

Reading the regulations pertaining to the recreational scuba diving permits that we are required to hold when we dive around the Cape Peninsula (and along much of the South African coast) was enlightening. Most of these are common sense, but it was news to me (for example) that no diving is permitted between 11pm and 4am, anywhere in an MPA! It also put paid to any personal chumming activities… What a pity – I would have loved to have had a great white shark all to myself!

By the way, Bird Island – mentioned below – is near Port Elizabeth. There’s a magnificent lighthouse there.

RECREATIONAL SCUBA DIVING PERMIT CONDITIONS

The holder of a recreational SCUBA diving permit shall:

not remove, unduly disturb or harass any marine organism or habitat, including shells or substrate, marine mammals, seabirds and fish.
not feed fish, practice chumming, or dump any material, or discharge any biological attractants in the MPA.
dive in the Table Mountain, Pondoland, Aliwal Shoal and Stilbaai MPA during daylight hours only (from half an hour before local sunrise to the time of local sunset), unless as part of a group being taken out by an DEA-authorised business operator. A representative of a registered Diving Club or individuals must notify the managing authority of the MPA to their satisfaction if they intend night diving. (Table Mountain (SANParks) – 021-786 5656, Pondoland (Eastern Cape Parks) – 047-387 0451/043-742 4450, Aliwal Shoal (Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife – 0825592848). Stilbaai (CapeNature – 028-754 2234).
not scuba dive in the Bird Island MPA at all.
not dive in any MPA where a scuba diving permit is required between 23:00 and 04:00 at all.
abide by the Diver Code of Conduct (www.environment.gov.za).
note that these conditions will be applicable to any new MPAs that may be declared, regazetted or required to have a permit in the future.
adhere to the condition that boats taking persons diving in an MPA where a permit is required shall only launch from an authorized launching site, and shall not launch earlier than an hour before local sunrise or return later than an hour after local sunset unless night diving in compliance with condition 3.

To obtain your MPA permit, take R100 and your identity document or passport to your nearest post office, and ask for a scuba diving permit form at the counter. It’s a blue and white form, the same one as is used for angling, crayfishing, and some other consumptive marine usage activities.

Newsletter: Back from Sodwana

Hello divers and others

We are back from Sodwana. When we arrived the folks that had dived the day before said the conditions were not that great… “The water is only 26 degrees and the visibility was only about 15-20 metres.” Well… being tough and from Cape Town we just had to endure the hardship and had 8 amazing dives. It was partly cloudy most days so nobody came back toasted like we did on the last trip. To the 12 people that joined me, BIG THANK YOU. It was good!!! Clare has put together a disc of photos for everyone and we will make a plan to get them to you.

Below are a few photos from some of the dives.

I have a fair amount of diving to do in the coming weeks as we were able to sign up 28 people for a Discover Scuba experience. Kate is also back from the UK and needs to do forty dives before June when she will attend an Instructor course.

Descending at Pinnacles with Adam, Ollie and Goot

We also have an Advanced course running and this coming weekend I will start a Nitrox/Deep speciality combo, six deeper dives to some of Cape Town’s stunning wrecks, on Nitrox (enriched air) After the deep dives we will continue the Open Water student training.

The winter months bring cold but very clean water into False Bay, with northerly winds we have exceptional visibility and this winter we will focus on running the Deep, Wreck and Night specialties every month. The wrecks in Smitswinkel Bay are almost all in 35 metres of water and these wrecks are a sight for sore eyes when the water is clean. Night diving has so much to offer as the ambient light, moonlight and bright torches turn the ocean into a pool of light filled with some amazing creatures.

I have also bought more gear and have a few warmer wetsuits for the cooler months coming to a ocean near you.

I would like to make either a Saturday or a Sunday morning boat dive every weekend, weather permitting, so give me some idea of what days are best for whom so we can try and schedule something.

We have also added a few videos to youtube, quite a few new posts to the blog and the website has had a facelift. The blog is an amazing source of information for anything ocean and diving related with many book reviews and a host of other information on sea life. There are hundreds of photos and many of you appear in them! Take a look sometime.

I also have many of your dive cards and will try and drop them off but if you are in the southern suburbs at some point call me and we can meet somewhere. Sending them by post is often a problem as they are mistaken for credit cards and they often just vanish.

best regards

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Strobes

Tony and I love doing night dives. It’s wonderful to watch the sunset, and then be underwater as the sky darkens and the nocturnal marine creatures come out to play. Last year, mostly by accident, we gave each other strobes for Christmas.

A strobe is usually a small, battery powered device that emits a very bright, flashing light at regular intervals. The ones we bought for each other (from Andre) are both rated to 50 metres’ depth and visible for several kilometres on the surface, so useful for emergency signalling both above and below the sea. They burn for hours on only one or two small batteries.

Tony’s is from Seemann Sub (rebranding as Subgear at the moment), and has a small ridged wheel at the end opposite the lit portion that you turn to switch it on and off.

Mine is a Princeton Tec Aqua Strobe that runs on a single AA battery and will burn for eight hours. You turn the cover over the lit portion to switch it on and off.

Both strobes float head up in the water, so when we attached them to our cylinder (just put the lanyard over the pillar valve before connecting the first stage) and submerged ourselves, they floated just behind our heads. You can’t see the light of your own strobe in this position (which is good, because it would get really annoying!) but it’s very visible to your dive buddy. You could also attach it to the shoulder of your BCD – some vests have velcro there for that purpose.

We really enjoyed having these underwater the first time we used them. Lukas was with us on his first night dive, and we had another instructor and his student with us (they also both had strobes), and it was incredibly easy to keep track of where everyone was without having to swim right on top of each other.

These would also be useful on a deep dive, for diver identification, and if you’re diving anywhere that there’s a chance (however slim) that you might get lost on the surface.

Newsletter: Diving is addictive

Hi everyone

The weather has been fooling around for a while now and dive planning has been a little tricky. We had a few real good days in False Bay last week, a clear 6-8 metre visibility night dive on Saturday night and two really good boat launches on Sunday.

Courses

Running at the moment: Open Water, Advanced, Nitrox, Deep, Rescue and Divemaster. There is always space for anyone interested in gaining some special dive skills so feel free to ask questions.

Our blog (http:// www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog) is an excellent source of information for any diving related questions you might have plus a whole lot more. Our website, www.learntodivetoday.co.za, has also had a facelift so visit them and if you don’t find the answers to your questions then mail me.

Since late last year I started running courses with the option of splitting the payments. This has worked well and I will continue to offer this should you wish. Mail me for details.

Recent dives

A few pictures from the weekend’s diving follow:

We were five people for the night dive on Saturday night at Long Beach and with such good visibility it was easy to see where everyone was.

Pleated toadfish on the sand at Long Beach by night

Sunday’s first dive was to the SAS Transvaal, the first 15 metres of water was murky but as the bottom starts to darken so the wreck becomes visible.

Visibility on the bottom was around 6-8 metres and our maximum depth was 33 metres.

The second dive, to Partridge Point, was made more enjoyable by a few playful seals constantly swimming around us looking for attention. The visibility was really weird as there were patches of 10 plus metres visibility with the random murky patches where it dropped off to 3 metres.

Sodwana is set and ready, we have 12 people but should you think it might be an idea you have a day or two to decide.

MPA Permits… We will soon have to say ”No, you can’t dive” if you don’t have one as the officials are clamping down on dive schools claiming we do not inform our divers. So be informed, you need a permit, please get one at the post office and keep it in your dive bag as you will be asked to produce it at random dive sites by equally random officials.

Be good and have fun

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog
Diving is addictive!

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076 817 1099
<a href=”http://www.learntodivetoday.co.za” target=”_blank”>www.learntodivetoday.co.za</a>
<a href=”https://www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog” target=”_self”>www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog</a>
<em>Diving is addictive!</em>

You’re a qualified Open Water diver… What next?

So, you have just qualified as an Open Water diver. Congratulations, the world’s oceans are there for you to explore. An often asked question is:

What’s next?

Advanced. One word, and that is often what you will get from anyone, including your instructor.

However, a good instructor will sit you down and try and find out a little more about where you think you might go with your diving. At this point it is unlikely you will know: will wrecks be your thing? Underwater photography? Exploring little-known dive sites?

Many an instructor will tell you that whilst doing your Advanced course you will come to realise what you will like best. This is hardly likely. Will one dive on a wreck be convincing enough? Will one dive with a camera have you rushing out to buy R20,000 worth of underwater photography equipment?

What if you decide photography is your thing… Do you choose to do three photography dives as part of your Advanced course? Can you? Do you even need to do an Advanced course if you love underwater photography? Or perhaps deep diving is what your heart desires. Will your Instructor take you on four deep dives for your Advanced course?

There are a multitude of questions and the answers are not always clear until you have done some diving. The whole idea with the Advanced course is to do the two core dives – navigation and deep – and three adventure dives, in the hope one of the three will entice you to do the corresponding Specialty.

It often does, and sadly this is likely to be where a diver stops exploring the opportunities available. A diver does a photography dive, rushes off to buy a camera, and this becomes his main focus. Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with this – but what you do is limit yourself if you choose this path.

Often a new diver will decide Divemaster is the goal, so they do Advanced, Rescue and Divemaster. In as little as two months you have achieved this status, have done 60 dives and are now ready to go and work and earn an income for doing what you love. Sounds great, and it is, but are you ready for everything?

You land the dream Divemaster job in a tropical location – awesome! The first day you get to take a group of 12 on a night dive. Hmm, oh yes, you did do one during your Divemaster training, or perhaps two, or maybe not… Can you safely say you are ready to take 12 strangers on an underwater exploration at night when you have no experience?

Day two the group want to explore a deep reef, so off you go with twelve strangers to a depth of 30 metres. You did one deep dive for Advanced, possibly a few during Divemaster – are you ready? The next day you take 12 strangers to a site with a raging current. Have you done drift diving? It is an amazing experience when everyone drifts along with you but have a few stragglers, a few who swim against the current and suddenly your group of 12 are scattered all over the ocean.

Yes, you are a qualified Divemaster, but it could be you have little or no experience in drift diving, night diving, wreck diving and everyone’s favourite, deep diving. Sure there are Divemasters with all of this experience, but they are few and far between. Some Divemasters have never dived with a camera, and they get frustrated when the have a group of photographers to lead who are content to move no more than 20 metres from the entry point because there is so much to photograph.

So the question again, “Whats next?”

You should dive, as much as you can. If you want to combine this with furthering your diving qualifications, that’s great, but you don’t have to. I dived as an Open Water diver for 18 years, and didn’t feel as though I was missing out on anything. Plus, after all that time in the water, I was a capable and confident diver already when I started to do more dive courses.

Local diving varies from city to city and country to country. Depending on where you plan on doing the majority of your dives, have your instructor advise you on the best, but many different, options. In any event, to build on your capabilities underwater try and choose a path that will cover a wide range of diving environments and give you some solid experience.

My opinion is do more than one of your Advanced dives using a compass, so you are comfortable with how they work. Many of Cape Town’s dive sites are shore entries and being a good navigator eliminates long surface swims.

Also, do more than one dive to a depth greater than 18 metres. You are going to be qualified to dive to 30 metres after the Advanced course, so be sure you are comfortable being at 30 metres.

If you decide to do Specialties but are unsure of which, consider where you will dive. For example in Cape Town I would suggest you do a Deep Specialty and have your instructor conduct some of the dives on wrecks. This will get you to a point where you are comfortable with greater depths (Deep Specialty will qualify you to 40 metres). If wreck diving is your passion a Wreck Specialty is a must, as is Enriched Air diving as this extends your bottom time, a valuable commodity at most of the wrecks in and around Cape Town.

These are just a few of the options, so dust off the Open Water manual and see just how many different routes there are. Choose wisely! And remember to dive as much as possible.