What is the difference between the Advanced Course and the Specialties?

This is a question I get asked quite regularly. I get the question of, I've done my Advanced Course, am I now a deep diver?

The PADI Advanced Course is designed to do straight after the Open Water Course. It's a really good course to do, as during the open water, you do a lot of skills that teach you how to survive. But when you do the Advanced Course, you learn a lot about the things that you'll use on every single dive. Realistically, we don't flood our mask on every dive and we don't run out of air on every dive, but the skills we do in the Advanced Course, we will use on all of our dives.

So, what's the difference between the Specialty and the Advanced Course? The Advanced Course gives you a taste of all the different dives you can do. So for example, you do a deep dive in the Advanced Course, and that's a dive between 18 and 30 meters. If you really like that deep dive, then you should go on and do the Specialty. Now the Specialty is four dives, and there's four deep dives there. And on that one, you actually go closer to the 40 meter mark. So the Advanced Course touches on all the different courses you can do, and which ever one you enjoyed, then you go on to the Specialty and learn a lot more about that area of diving.