Drysuit is still not a bad idea.
@lowviz has shared that even though he had been drysuit diving on Atlantic wrecks for years, Edd Sorenson still required him to do a drysuit course (with Edd) before he could do SM with Edd.
Interesting...I've never heard of Edd requiring much less teaching a drysuit course. Unless of course someone shows up to a more advanced class who can't perform to the level expected.
first I've heard of that.
@lowviz can you elaborate what the deal was there?
To the OP on the AOW subject. If you are doing an ITT/Cavern course with a good instructor, it's not hard to combine AOW into that course so you don't necessarily have to do it separately.
For NAUI we flexibility with the dives, but here's some of them
UW Navigation dive:That is a bit of a joke, but when part of an ITT course can be really easy to combine with some buoyancy/trim/propulsion skills by making the student navigate in blue water without changing depth, or stay a foot off of the bottom while "task loaded" with the compass.
Night Dive: same kind of thing, just conduct one of the intended dives after dark. Can stay in the OW portion of a cavern and since it's combined with the cavern course, you can get used to light signals in the dark, buoyancy/trim/propulsion etc etc.
Deep/simulated Deco dive: Florida caves are deep, not hard to get to 100ft, and/or the more important part is simulated deco which combines back into
Photography: same thing with emphasizing buoyancy/propulsion/trim while task loading. Even if it's a gopro.
Search/Recovery:same as above
Not sure what some of the other agencies actual limits are, but if you feel like you need an AOW card, just ask the instructor to incorporate it into their lesson plan and it should require almost no adjustments to their gameplan