AOW Requirements with PADI

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

all this talk of needing AOW to get on a boat. Must be a developed country thing. Developing countries don't care, will blithely take you to 30m/100ft on OW.

Sent from my SM-G900W8 using Tapatalk
 
Before doing some of the specialties you have to have done you AOW first. For example - you mention doing the deep specialty - the prerequisite for the deep specialty is Advanced Open Water. Also for the wreck diving specialty. So make sure you check that out.

Actually, all you need is Adventure Diver (not AOW) before doing the Deep or Wreck specialties.
But the point of your advice is to check first, not assume.
 
My head hurts... Glad I don't give a $hit about cards/specialty dives and other nonsense.. Yes, PADI is a money sucking machine and that's it... Give me a break.. Boat diver specialty... It took me 5 minutes to show my wife how to back flip in to the water and how to deal with the ladder...

Jim...
 
It took me 5 minutes to show my wife how to back flip in to the water and how to deal with the ladder...

Jim...

This is the ONLY things you need to know about diving off a boat?
 
My head hurts... Glad I don't give a $hit about cards/specialty dives and other nonsense.. Yes, PADI is a money sucking machine and that's it... Give me a break.. Boat diver specialty... It took me 5 minutes to show my wife how to back flip in to the water and how to deal with the ladder...

Jim...
It appears you have no idea what the content of the Boat Diver Specialty is.
So why do you think you can say it is worthless?
 
Well, I guess you could drag it out.. Like how to put on your fins... Or maybe don't **** in the broken head... How to tie a sheep- shank and maybe tell them don't play with the prop.. PADI makes the smallest stupidest things into classes...

Jim.,

---------- Post added September 15th, 2015 at 11:36 PM ----------

This is the ONLY things you need to know about diving off a boat?

Yes... Those are the only two things that are really any different then shore diving... We dive off our own little 16 foot boat with no trouble's at all...
But I do want to get the mante wrangler card on our next trip to Florida... I also think the jellyfish avoiding card would come in handy in Bonaire..


Jim....
 
I'd actually not recommend paying for AOW because deep supercedes it anyway... That'd be the card you showed to dive ops. The only reason to get AOW would be if you consequently wanted Master Diver.

Certainly don't want to disagree with an instuctor (I'm not one), but I have seen "counter jockies" in dive shops give the "deer in headlights" look at a deep dive card rather than an AOW for their advanced dives because "that's their rules.". IMHO, If you plan on dive travel with the least amount of hassle, get the AOW and consider it money well spent. No one wants an extra hassle on a dive vacation.:)
 
Thanks for all the great advice. I especially didn’t consider that I have to be AOW to do the deep speciality.

There are other Dive Agencies, and they do not have the same prerequisites as PADI, you might want to check around.


Bob
 
A lot of the rationale behind some of the AOW choices lies in the location. I just worked with an AOW student here in Colorado. When we talked about what he wanted to do for his elective dives, he mentioned videography and photography. I did have a good laugh about doing those classes in 5 foot of visibility. We could have enjoyed looking at his GoPRo video showing a half hour of a the greenish haze of the algae bloom. Fish identification is another good one--hope you enjoy thinking, "Yep, looks like another crawfish." Boat diver (which, BTW, has a lot of information in it that goes well beyond being a passenger on a typical dive boat) is another non-starter.

One I like to include in the mix is altitude diver. That may seem odd because, like nitrox certification, everything involved with that dive is done on the shore. Once in the water, there is really nothing special to do. I like that because it gives me the freedom to do what I like to make the student a better diver. We can get all the altitude academics out of the way and then plan a dive that really helps the student learn to dive. It allows me extra freedom to do what I like to do with an AOW dive, which is to plan a sequence that builds skills throughout. For example, once we have done the navigation dive, we will have some navigation to do on every subsequent dive. After Peak Performance Buoyancy, we will work on those skills on every dive thereafter. A student can really learn a lot in a well-planned and coordinated 5 dive sequence.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom