AOW necessary?

[sefuchs]

I took the AOW after about 100 OW dives. IMHO get 20-30 dives in first so you can really focus on AOW techniques instead of newbie learning issues. Mostly took it b/c my wife listens to others more than me to "suggestions" to improve skills. It is kind of spendy, can be seen as a waste of time or viewed as "just another cert" but as with any class you get out of it what you put into it.

I thought I was pretty good on weight for a fat old man. Was using 12 lbs before the AOW, now I use 8-9 lbs so dropping 3-4 lbs is a positive outcome. My wife had even better results. Nothing beats experience but taking classes to accelerate experience just can't hurt.

 

[tursiops]

Like I said, our LDS throws Peak in for free as part of the regular OW package. It not only turns out better new divers, it also gets one specialty out of the way towards AOW. Which when you think about it, might also be a marketing ploy to entice them to pay more later to finish the AOW, so it's good for everyone.

Maybe not, since you don't need any specialties for AOW...just the first ("adventure") dive of five specialties. The crux of PPB is the first dive anyway, and regardless of how good a person's buoyancy is, a good instructor will also find something useful to teach in PPB, including trim and trim techniques, various fin kicks including backwards, different kinds of fins, weighting changes caused by equipment and environment changes, specialized trim for specialized purposes, like photography, etc.

 

[boulderjohn]

It used to be, it was separated out, along with other skills, so divers could get certified faster.

I never heard this before. Can you document that?

When we wrote an article on teaching buoyancy in OW classes, one member of our team was a noted dive historian, one of the very first NAUI instructors (I believe he is NAUI #27 or so, IIRC.) Based on his research, we concluded that instruction from the start had very little focus on buoyancy, primarily because there were no buoyancy control devices in existence. As primitive devices emerged and evolved into what we have now, instructional processes remained intact from the old days.

It is possible that individual instructors did a lot more than others, but I am unaware of any effort by any agency to removed instructional processes that taught buoyancy. If you can show where that actually happened, I would be highly interested.