AOW "elective" dives don't seem so elective.

[TT_Vert]

yes that seems to be more and more common today. two possible reasons.....one, they are just trying to sell you a course, or two, their insurance may require them to ask for it.
i would check if they will accept a deep cert and do that instead.
padi aow is pretty much useless as far as real training goes. just my opinion. and i took padi aow. but when i did it, it was cheaper to take the course than pay for that number of dives during one of my vacations, so why not right.

The process is already started. We actually fly to FL on Tuesday. The plan is to get the AOW cert but also do some diving while we're out there. We haven't done a ton of diving since 2019 so it's sort of a refresher for us before we had off on the LOB to the GBR. We located our own dive op for the AOW cert. It seems most LOBs require this out that way. Yeah, I'm not a fan of any of this PADI money grab either but sadly many dive ops do require it so my choices are limited unless I Just planned to take myself out to dive.

 

[Johnoly]

We actually fly to FL on Tuesday.

Good news is your weather forecast looks really good and almost no chance of being blown out. 2 days of dives should be easy and you'll be done with it.

It seems most LOBs require this

It's the insurance companies that are saying divers must have the AOW card for them to be manifested on the "Better & Deeper" dives that are past the BOW limits. And with computer manifest databases that can be instantly matched to certification databases, there no possibility for boats to 'look the other way ' without risking losing their policy. Call it any name & blame you wish, but you're not getting on the boat without it.

 

[TT_Vert]

Good news is your weather forecast looks really good and almost no chance of being blown out. 2 days of dives should be easy and you'll be done with it.


It's the insurance companies that are saying divers must have the AOW card for them to be manifested on the "Better & Deeper" dives that are past the BOW limits. And with computer manifest databases that can be instantly matched to certification databases, there no possibility for boats to 'look the other way ' without risking losing their policy. Call it any name & blame you wish, but you're not getting on the boat without it.

Great. We are diving next sat/sun. This is his plan:

We will meet at the **Redacted** on Saturday at 9:00am. We'll have a brief discussion and finalize any paperwork that still needs to be filled out. From there we will head out to a local beach. Most likely Turtle Beach or Bird Key. We will do 3 dives (Navigation + 2 others) Saturday. Sunday we will meet at Hudson Grotto at 8:30 and do 2 dives (deep + 1 other).

 

[tursiops]

no such requirement with ssi

He was talking PADI. Seems reasonable, don't you think, to NOT jump to 130 feet right after OW?

 

[tursiops]

I'm not a fan of any of this PADI money grab either

It's not a PADI money grab, it is a dive operator money grab. Other operators will let you do the dives you want to do. You made a poor choice of operator.

 

[Scared Silly]

IIRC when I was playing DM at our uni we did UW Navigation, Deep, Night, Search, and Buoyancy. Now that nitrox is part of AOW I would suggest it instead of buoyancy because that is something that one can practice on their own. In fact I use every dive as a way to practice my buoyancy.

IMHO taking AOW makes someone a truly certified diver.

 

[TT_Vert]

It's not a PADI money grab, it is a dive operator money grab. Other operators will let you do the dives you want to do. You made a poor choice of operator.

PADI is the company with these arbitrary classes, the dive ops just offer what had been adopted

 

[The Chairman]

The quality of your AOW experience depends on the instructor, and not the agency, nor the dive op. You can either treat this as a card collecting activity or a chance to learn the true art of Scuba.

 

[bradlw]

It's not a PADI money grab, it is a dive operator money grab. Other operators will let you do the dives you want to do. You made a poor choice of operator.

in my opinion, the money grab comes in the form of SOME of those specialties.... the ones that give you nothing that you really need. I recently watched a couple different youtube videos of instructors rating the various classes. They both pointed out examples of bad ones....mostly the ones that give you a card that nobody is going to ever ask you for. The ones that really don't teach you much of anything that you don't already know.
The one guy admits that he's a horrible underwater photographer...but he's certified to instruct it. He pointed out that you're better off learning tips and tricks from a basic OW diver that is a very good photographer. It doesn't need to be a formal class, a certification, a card.

IMHO taking AOW makes someone a truly certified diver.

Interesting take. And yeah, I can see that. I think it depends on teh diver and the situation though...and of course on the instructor and the shop's program.
In my example, I came into the class and away from my OW cert with an engineering mind...thinking things through very thoroughly. I didn't get all that much out of my Adv open water. As I recall, boat diver was one... I'd already done a good bit of diving off boats. Got pretty much nothing from that. I'm an instrument rated pilot and was fairly active with that at the time. I got pretty much nothing out of navigation. I came through OW back when they taught tables and I had a pretty good handle on all of that from basic OW. I don't recall getting much from that either. I did learn a few techniques from Stress and Rescue, I suppose. I don't know it was all a long time ago so maybe I'm just not remembering

 

[Scared Silly]

I think it depends on the diver and the situation though...and of course on the instructor and the shop's program.

Exactly, just as Pete noted. I really enjoyed playing DM at our uni. As it was a class for college credit we had to have so many hours of classroom instruction as well as "lab" time. Our open water session were over a weekend at a local lake so students made a weekend of it. Many camped so it was fun. In general the staff never made much money, I figured it paid just enough to cover my PADI dues and insurance plus the gas/food for open water. My time was never covered. I was okay with that especially as was uni researcher so working with students was part of my normal 9 to 5.