What a lot of confusion. There are no required number of prior dives for PADI AOW. Also, there is no 15' for 20 mins requirement for a non-training dive; you can log whatever you want.
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Bob DBF
Contributor
1962, there was no recreational limit. NDL dive tables ended at 190', at 200 feet it was a decompression dive. Advanced was learning the decompression tables and trying to get out with the old divers and learn their tricks.
A case can be made that there is still no recreational limits, since technical divers are a subset of recreational diver, the distinction is made by training agencies and has been set at 130' and a card may be required by dive op's for deeper dives. Since there is no SCUBA Police, outside of a dive op's rules or in a training environment, what you do is a function of what you want to do and the divers you are with. Of course the Darwin awards are always looking for contenders, so know what you are doing and be careful.
Bob
Read clearly and they'll be less confusion. Never said PADI has a minimum number of dives for AOW, I said some dive shops do including mine just as we require 100 dives to begin a Cavern course and PADI has no requirement other than AOW. Sure you can log any dive you want and I should have specified (which would also cause less confusion) but for training purposes a qualifying logged dive for a PADI training course is a minimum of 5 meters/15' for 20 mins or a minimum of 1400liters/50cf breathed.
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OP
mcohen1021
Contributor
I was certified in 1989 while I was going to community college and continued taking classes working towards a DM cert over the next two years. One of the prerequisites for the class? “At least 40 logged dives to begin the course and 60 dives to earn certification.” I did 81 dives in the 1st 12 months I was a diver, and 100 in the 2nd season. I wanted to be sure that not only did I know what I was doing, but that when I visited a Caribbean resort, I showed the experience needed for whatever. I dove in all conditions I could to get myself to the level I felt I needed to save myself or someone else (and I did save myself and one other one year). Cold water, murky/blackout, deep, night, drift, even altitude - I tried it all.
I just feel that having a certain level of certification should be based on achievement, not just taking a class. Each cert level should require a certain # of dives, and certain competencies should be mastered before moving up the c-card chain.
I just feel that having a certain level of certification should be based on achievement, not just taking a class. Each cert level should require a certain # of dives, and certain competencies should be mastered before moving up the c-card chain.
I completely agree! 181 dives in 2 seasons is some great experience. A lot of people don't realize how long it actually can take to do 100 dives especially if you don't live somewhere that has close access to diving.
I would bet money that because of doing that amount of dives in preparation you are a far better DM than a lot of others who have done the "zero to hero" route of the bare minimum dives.
OP
mcohen1021
Contributor
It comes with a price too… My last 6 tanks of fresh water scuba was in 2014, where I placed 32 200# anchors at the bottom of the lake for a ski course… Blackout conditions, cold, trash and debris everywhere, you had to be comfortable doing it all with your eyes closed and be ready to cut yourself out of old ropes, fishing lines, etc.
Well, I will say, living in DFW, yeah all we have are murky lakes. LOL. I was diving every weekend for 9 or 10 months! I had these freebie logbooks from a now defunct diveshop called Diver’s World in Richardson, TX and the logged 81 single line dives per book. I had 2 filled out in 2 years.
Okay, here's some history, at least for the United States.
1. In the earliest days of recreational diving, the only real guide to depths and times was the U.S. Navy tables. They were designed (obviously) for military use, but were adopted by the recreational diving community.
2. There was also no real dive certification process. The first true instruction was done by the Scripps Institute in southern California. Nearby Los Angeles County sent some of its staff to Scripps to learn how to instruct, and they took those methods home to form the Los Angeles County certification system. The YMCA was also offering classes, but there was no universal governance system for it--each YMCA ran its own program. There were also instructors all over the country doing whatever they thought was right. (My cousin learned in that era, and he was simply sold some gear by a local sporting goods store and told by the salesman how to use it.)
3. In 1960, the Scripps-trained director of the Los Angeles County program, Al Tillman, joined other colleagues and got instructors from across the country to come together and try to agree upon standards for instruction. The key meeting took place in Houston. According to Tillman, the group from Chicago, led by Dennis Erickson, was extremely vocal about the need for very high standards. Also according to Tillman, the average OW student leaving a class today is a better diver than most of the instructors who met in Houston in 1960. Los Angeles could not go nationwide because it was taxpayer supported, so they had to form a new agency, and NAUI was born.
4. A few years later (not sure exactly when), Los Angeles County noticed that a huge percentage of OW divers were quitting soon after certification. They decided to create a course that would expand skills but would mostly introduce divers to different aspects of diving by requiring them to do different kinds of dives. They hoped that would help them find an area of interest. They called this their advanced diver program. NAUI followed suit soon after that for the same reason. That is the birth of AOW, which is not at all what many modern divers believe.
5. Having been born from a taxpayer-supported system, NAUI was originally set up as a non-profit, and it did not have a good way to get income without those taxpayer funds. It relied heavily upon donations, and it had its headquarters in a scuba diving magazine's office. It was thus constantly dealing with financial pressure, and it once had to survive on a loan from Bill High (later founder of PSI). It focused its instruction at colleges and universities, where classes could be paid for from student tuition that would have otherwise gone to some other course--it was really the equivalent of tax money.
6. Being (as usual) strapped for cash, in 1965 NAUI leadership decided to focus its instructional program to California, and in doing so it canceled a major training session in Chicago. This angered the Chicago branch of NAUI, which had been at odds with the NAUI leadership over other issues for some time, and Dennis Erickson and others decided to leave NAUI and form their own agency--PADI. One huge change they made was to stop looking for their students in colleges and universities. They instead set up a program that put instruction at the dive shops where students were buying their gear. Similarly, a scuba trade organization, the National Association of Skin Diving Stores, saw the benefit of that plan and changed their name to National Association of Skin Diving Schools (NASDS), which later merged with (and actually took over) SSI.
7. Throughout all of this time, the standard for diving practice was still the U.S. Navy tables, and that was a real problem for dive operators. The tables based surface intervals on the 120 minute compartment (theoretical tissue), and as a result, divers had to wait a very, very long time between dives. This was no problem with the Navy, since their divers rarely did more than one dive a day, but it was a real problem for dive operators. The Navy tables had not really had as much research as you would think in their creation, and eventually PADI commissioned exhaustive studies to find the best table for sport divers. Their research showed them that for the kind of dives they were doing, the 40 minute compartment was appropriate. PADI decided to use the 60 minute compartment instead to be more conservative, and they also shortened first dive times and eliminated decompression dives. That resulted in a table--the Recreational Dive Planner--that allowed sport divers to do multiple comfortable dives in one day. That is the origin of current diving depth limits.
1. In the earliest days of recreational diving, the only real guide to depths and times was the U.S. Navy tables. They were designed (obviously) for military use, but were adopted by the recreational diving community.
2. There was also no real dive certification process. The first true instruction was done by the Scripps Institute in southern California. Nearby Los Angeles County sent some of its staff to Scripps to learn how to instruct, and they took those methods home to form the Los Angeles County certification system. The YMCA was also offering classes, but there was no universal governance system for it--each YMCA ran its own program. There were also instructors all over the country doing whatever they thought was right. (My cousin learned in that era, and he was simply sold some gear by a local sporting goods store and told by the salesman how to use it.)
3. In 1960, the Scripps-trained director of the Los Angeles County program, Al Tillman, joined other colleagues and got instructors from across the country to come together and try to agree upon standards for instruction. The key meeting took place in Houston. According to Tillman, the group from Chicago, led by Dennis Erickson, was extremely vocal about the need for very high standards. Also according to Tillman, the average OW student leaving a class today is a better diver than most of the instructors who met in Houston in 1960. Los Angeles could not go nationwide because it was taxpayer supported, so they had to form a new agency, and NAUI was born.
4. A few years later (not sure exactly when), Los Angeles County noticed that a huge percentage of OW divers were quitting soon after certification. They decided to create a course that would expand skills but would mostly introduce divers to different aspects of diving by requiring them to do different kinds of dives. They hoped that would help them find an area of interest. They called this their advanced diver program. NAUI followed suit soon after that for the same reason. That is the birth of AOW, which is not at all what many modern divers believe.
5. Having been born from a taxpayer-supported system, NAUI was originally set up as a non-profit, and it did not have a good way to get income without those taxpayer funds. It relied heavily upon donations, and it had its headquarters in a scuba diving magazine's office. It was thus constantly dealing with financial pressure, and it once had to survive on a loan from Bill High (later founder of PSI). It focused its instruction at colleges and universities, where classes could be paid for from student tuition that would have otherwise gone to some other course--it was really the equivalent of tax money.
6. Being (as usual) strapped for cash, in 1965 NAUI leadership decided to focus its instructional program to California, and in doing so it canceled a major training session in Chicago. This angered the Chicago branch of NAUI, which had been at odds with the NAUI leadership over other issues for some time, and Dennis Erickson and others decided to leave NAUI and form their own agency--PADI. One huge change they made was to stop looking for their students in colleges and universities. They instead set up a program that put instruction at the dive shops where students were buying their gear. Similarly, a scuba trade organization, the National Association of Skin Diving Stores, saw the benefit of that plan and changed their name to National Association of Skin Diving Schools (NASDS), which later merged with (and actually took over) SSI.
7. Throughout all of this time, the standard for diving practice was still the U.S. Navy tables, and that was a real problem for dive operators. The tables based surface intervals on the 120 minute compartment (theoretical tissue), and as a result, divers had to wait a very, very long time between dives. This was no problem with the Navy, since their divers rarely did more than one dive a day, but it was a real problem for dive operators. The Navy tables had not really had as much research as you would think in their creation, and eventually PADI commissioned exhaustive studies to find the best table for sport divers. Their research showed them that for the kind of dives they were doing, the 40 minute compartment was appropriate. PADI decided to use the 60 minute compartment instead to be more conservative, and they also shortened first dive times and eliminated decompression dives. That resulted in a table--the Recreational Dive Planner--that allowed sport divers to do multiple comfortable dives in one day. That is the origin of current diving depth limits.
OP
mcohen1021
Contributor
Man, what a great read – that was awseome
@boulderjohn thanks for that info. Didn't know a lot of that history.
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