How about diving deeper and longer, extending your depth range and technical ability right down to 50 metres! Get to dive deep shipwrecks on the seabed, exploring a piece of history. The expedition diver internship gap year add on' allows you to do this.

Shallow reef diving is fantastic, but with the 'Expedition Diver Add On' you get trained in deep technical diving, learning to scuba dive with multiple tanks, using different gases.

You'll dive WW2 wrecks and lost cargo vessels, carrying out deep decompression dives, and seeing sights that few divers will ever see . . . this is an internship with excitment!!

If real adventure excites you, the 'Expedition Diver Internship add on' is for you. We'll run you through BSAC technical diving courses - BSAC Basic and Advanced Nitrox, plus BSAC Extended Range Diver.

At the end you'll be qualified to dive right down to 50 metres. You'll be comfortable diving with up to four scuba cylinders, switching between different gases in the water to either extend your bottom time, enhance the safety of your dive or allow you to exit the water faster. This is technical diving!!

Technical diving isn't for everyone, but if you do enjoy it, deep wreck diving will probably be the most exciting, & challenging thing you can do.

Deep 'technical diving' to 50 metres allows us access to ship wrecks lying beyond the reach (& diving ability) of most scuba divers.

In the last year alone we've dived enormous World War 2 battleships and a dutch submarine in the South China Sea. We regularly visit Thai freighters lying just off Koh Tao, and recently discovered a WW2 schooner lying close to the island. There's always something new to discover. This is real adventure.

This diving gap year internship add on is your chance to get involved in the experience of a lifetime. If you want an extreme challenge which takes you to the frontier of exploration, this is for you.


This type of diving is more demanding than recreational scuba diving. Technical diving requires a greater level of discipline and attention. It's more equipment intensive and requires a slightly higher level of physical fitness. The tec diving courses and deep wreck dives you'll do are more demanding than the other courses we teach at DJL Diving.

Here are two questions to ask yourself:

• Do you enjoy physical activities - playing sports, jogging, gym etc? You need to possess basic fitness.

• If you find something challenging do you have the resolve to stick at it until you master the new activity?

If so, this scuba diving gap year internship is the adventure of a lifetime!

Lets take a look in detail at what each course involves, and learn about the wrecks and expeditions that you'll get to experience.


Internship add on Courses: Combined Nitrox & Extended Range Diver

Your 'PADI Divemaster Internship', develops you as a dive professional - you're competent at organising diving & boat logistics and guiding certified divers within recreational diving depth limits (realistically 30 metres).

Now we go a step further, advancing into technical diving. In the BSAC combined nitrox course we'll introduce decompression diving.

This means extending your depth and/or bottom time so that you can no longer ascend directly to the surface - you have to do decompression stops during ascent.

What that means is that you'll need to carry more breathing gas with you - you'll learn to dive with multiple scuba cylinders.
The combined nitrox course also teaches you to use nitrox blends containing up to 50% oxygen - this enhances the safety of your decompression stops.

The BSAC combined nitrox course gets you doing deco dives using full tec diving equipment, down to 35 metres, and gets you ready for;

BSAC Extended Range Diver

Now we go even further, developing depth experience right down to 50 metres.

We also teach you how to utilize nitrox blends using up to 100% oxygen for accelerated decompression.
The reason we want to dive this deep is to get onto deep shipwrecks on the seabed. The tec training included on this gap year diving internship add-on will include dives on Koh Tao's local wrecks.

This includes:

- The Unicorn. 70 metre long Thai cargo vessel, lying just north of Koh Tao. Sunk as the result of an insurance fraud during the 1980s, she is sitting upright with her deck at 42 - 46 metres, with the sand surrounding the wreck at 50 metres.

- WW2 Japanese Schooner. North of Koh Tao, discovered by DJL during 2007. We've located the stern section of this wooden hulled schooner, and still need to do many more dives to map her properly.

- The Torpedo Wreck. Big Thai cargo vessel at 50 metres, carrying a cargo of teak logs, located north of Koh Tao.

- 'Inverted Wreck' & 'Dumb-dumb maru'. Shallow wrecks located in Chumphon Province lying at 40 and 26 metres respectively.

The real attraction of this scuba diving gap year internship is the chance to get involved in dive exploration. You will join at least two local dive expeditions, seeking out new ship wrecks and pinnacles.

To get an idea of what diving adventures we undertake, check out our scuba diving blog, and see the news items at the top and bottom of this page.

For just a little more money, there's also an opportunity to get involved in liveaboard dive expeditions further afield. For example you could dive big WW2 battleships and submarines in the South China Sea.
You should contact DJL Diving if you're interested in finding out more.


Here's a breakdown of the costs and exactly what's included in the diving gap year internship add on;