Is AOW a required prerequisite to do a Divemaster?

[wstorms]

What standards are you talking about?

There are no standards governing your diving. There are only recommendations regarding staying within the limits of your "training and experience." By "training and experience," PADI is referring to a combination of the two, and you are supposed to use good judgment as to whether the combination in your past is adequate. Some dive operations will require AOW or its equivalent for deeper dives, but that is a requirement of the dive operation, not the agency. The agency, in fact, has no legal authority to make such a requirement.

Well see my post above; it seems PADI does in fact require students to have specific certifications. In addition, in the same instructor manual you find a chapter called "General standards and procedures" starting on page 15. Within these standards, you find the following definition of a deep dive:
"Deep Dive A deep dive is conducted at a depth between 18 to 30 metres/60 to 100 feet. Exceptions: Some courses such as Deep Diver and TecRec courses allow for greater depths."

I can't comment on whether or not it is legal and conform the proper authority, but as a DM, you better treat the mentioned standards as, well, standards.

 

[boulderjohn]

Well see my post above; it seems PADI does in fact require students to have specific certifications. In addition, in the same instructor manual you find a chapter called "General standards and procedures" starting on page 15. Within these standards, you find the following definition of a deep dive:
"Deep Dive A deep dive is conducted at a depth between 18 to 30 metres/60 to 100 feet. Exceptions: Some courses such as Deep Diver and TecRec courses allow for greater depths."

I can't comment on whether or not it is legal and conform the proper authority, but as a DM, you better treat the mentioned standards as, well, standards.

Those are training standards--they are what is required while working with students. They do not apply to personal diving outside of training.

 

[Hartattack]

Those are training standards--they are what is required while working with students. They do not apply to personal diving outside of training.

I think it is in the best interest of the thread considering the student would like to become a professional diver, E.g., PADI Divemaster, to stick to the educational standards which an Instructor or CD would follow to get OP certified to the rules of that organization.

 

[Miyaru]

...
I can't comment on whether or not it is legal and conform the proper authority, but as a DM, you better treat the mentioned standards as, well, standards.

I think it is in the best interest of the thread considering the student would like to become a professional diver, E.g., PADI Divemaster, to stick to the educational standards which an Instructor or CD would follow to get OP certified to the rules of that organization.

As John mentioned the first time: training standards.
If you, as a DM, take a group of certified divers for a tour under water, and one of them touches 20m depth, there's no issue. It's within recreational limits and it's not a course dive. It's increasing experience in a gradual way.

 

[Hartattack]

As John mentioned the first time: training standards.
If you, as a DM, take a group of certified divers for a tour under water, and one of them touches 20m depth, there's no issue. It's within recreational limits and it's not a course dive. It's increasing experience in a gradual way.

Ah yes, "Nothing happens" until there is an investigation into why one of those students got bent or injured during the dive. The key here is mitigating risk factors of students and dive professionals while under instruction or guided dive. The training standards protect you and the professional and dive center in case of an emergency or legal action, so in that case, the professional diver was operating to the best of their ability and training standards outlined in their education. Nevertheless, I'm a bit perplexed why we are not discussing Training Standards accurately on a divers goal to go professional—it should be shall I say, "The Standard"?

With all this said, OP should get the AOW certification if he wants to go DM acroding to the new training standards posted above. I would even argue, one should also get a Nitrox Certification and possibly a fundamentals of technical diving course beforehand, but that is IMHO.

 

[boulderjohn]

If you, as a DM, take a group of certified divers for a tour under water, and one of them touches 20m depth, there's no issue. It's within recreational limits and it's not a course dive. It's increasing experience in a gradual way.

Ah yes, "Nothing happens" until there is an investigation into why one of those students got bent or injured during the dive.

Please look at the wording carefully. Miyaru referred to a DM leading "certified divers." Hartattack writes about "students." When conducting training dives with students, you must follow the standards for those dives. When you are a DM leading certified divers outside of training, there are no standards to follow.

I assure you that if you contact PADI, they will be quite adamant about that. While it was always a policy, PADI has stressed it emphatically ever since the Dan Carlock lawsuit about a decade ago. In that case, two members of a dive club which had chartered a boat for 3 dives called the roll after each dive, failing to notice that Dan had not returned after the first dive. Although they were not working in any official capacity when they called the roll, PADI was sued because the people who called the roll happened to be PADI certified as DMs, and the lawsuit said the DMs were acting as "agents" of PADI. In one of the worst-defended suits in history, PADI lost $2 million. Since them, PADI has made it perfectly clear that people acting as DMs and instructors are not agents of PADI, and PADI does not control their conditions of employment. PADI can only control the rules for training. If you look at the statements students have to sign for classes, you will see it stated.

In Belize, dive operations, most of them PADI, regularly take brand new OW divers to the Blue Hole, going to 130 feet and even beyond. A few years ago, PADI wrote an open letter to Belize fairly begging them to write legislation around this. They had to do this because they have no authority to control those dives on their own.

 

[boulderjohn]

Here are some things to think about.

• Dive operators around the world--pretty much all of them--take OW-certified divers below 60 feet. Some will require AOW for dives in the 100-foot region, but most won't. Those dive operators take divers from all agencies, not just PADI. If PADI were to demand that PADI-certified DMs not take OW certified divers below 60 feet, no dive operator would hire a PADI-certified DM. They would only hire DMs from agencies that let the operator make the rules.
• If PADI were to sanction in some way a PADI dive operation for taking divers below 60 feet, that dive operation would quit its PADI affiliation in a heartbeat.
• PADI has no rules or standards for non-training dives, and with good reason. If PADI were to sanction in some way a PADI dive operation for taking divers below 60 feet, then that would signify that PADI is controlling the diving rules for that operation. If that were true, in any case in which an OW diver was led below 60 feet and died, not only would the shop be sued for violating that rule, so would PADI. Why do we not hear of such lawsuits for violating those rules? Because there are no such rules to violate.

 

[Hartattack]

Here are some things to think about.

• Dive operators around the world--pretty much all of them--take OW-certified divers below 60 feet. Some will require AOW for dives in the 100-foot region, but most won't. Those dive operators take divers from all agencies, not just PADI. If PADI were to demand that PADI-certified DMs not take OW certified divers below 60 feet, no dive operator would hire a PADI-certified DM. They would only hire DMs from agencies that let the operator make the rules.
• If PADI were to sanction in some way a PADI dive operation for taking divers below 60 feet, that dive operation would quit its PADI affiliation in a heartbeat.
• PADI has no rules or standards for non-training dives, and with good reason. If PADI were to sanction in some way a PADI dive operation for taking divers below 60 feet, then that would signify that PADI is controlling the diving rules for that operation. If that were true, in any case in which an OW diver was led below 60 feet and died, not only would the shop be sued for violating that rule, so would PADI. Why do we not hear of such lawsuits for violating those rules? Because there are no such rules to violate.

John, I get it, man. I am not worried about PADI here. If you take certified divers on a guided dive, and one of them gets hurt and a lawyer finds out they "went deeper then their certification level" who do you think that firm is going to go after? Not PADI—It's going to be the DM who holds liability insurance and the Dive Center.

 

[Scraps]

Yeah I have been thinking about that; it seems that standards wise you can indeed become a DM via OWD - AD - RES - DM, but DM itself does not qualify you to do deep dives* (even though the deep workshop is part of the curriculum). .

actually we are wrong, I just checked the 2020 manual:

Divemaster Course Prerequisites 1. PADI Advanced Open Water and PADI Rescue Diver certifcations (or qualifying certifcations) 2. 18 years old 3. Medical clearance attesting to dive ftness signed by a physician within the previous 12 months 4. 40 logged dives 5. Emergency First Response Primary and Secondary Care course completion (or qualifying training) within the last 24 months Exit Requirements 1. Emergency First Response Primary and Secondary Care course completion (or qualifying training) within the last 24 months 2. 60 logged dives; documented experience in underwater navigation, night diving and deep diving

Seems they fixed it over time.

But you were right that the DM certification is not by itself a qualification for deep dives. In fact, the DM cert does not even satisfy the deep dive prerequisites for the PADI Tec 40 course. A PADI DM wanting to take Tec 40 must first either take the Deep specialty course or provide logged evidence of 10 dives to 100 feet or greater.

 

[boulderjohn]

John, I get it, man. I am not worried about PADI here. If you take certified divers on a guided dive, and one of them gets hurt and a lawyer finds out they "went deeper then their certification level" who do you think that firm is going to go after? Not PADI—It's going to be the DM who holds liability insurance and the Dive Center.

DMs have taken millions of divers beyond 60 feet over many decades, and it would be impossible to estimate how many have been hurt or died. Can you cite a single case in which a DM was sued for that reason alone? Even one? Can you identify a single document from PADI or any other agency warning of this danger?

If this were a threat, don't you think that the insurance companies that dive operations use would require that those "rules" be followed? As I said earlier, a handful of dive operations around the world require AOW for dives in the 100 foot area, but for the most part there is no such restriction.

In past discussions, people have only found a handful of cases in which a DM was successfully sued after leading a fatal dive, and in those cases the DM was clearly negligent in ways other than depth. In the most famous, the DM led divers past 130 feet with AL 80s, ignored a diver's low on air signal, and then refused to share air when the diver's signal switched to OOA.