Completing Advanced Open Water Diver cert during our stay. Help!

[CaymanTourist]

My brother and I are taking an opportunity to complete our AOW cert with Ocean Frontiers during our stay. Our deep dive and underwater navigation dives are tomorrow morning. Later in the week we are completing the boat dive training and underwater naturalist(a mix of fish and coral I'Ding).

This leaves us one left to complete. Me and my brother, who only get to do dives about once a year, are pushing for a night dive, my step-dad(a PADI master diver) is pushing hard for peak-buoyancy. I think the night dive would be far more interesting and memorable than peak buoyancy but can see the benefit in refining that technique as well.

Based on your personal experience what would you pick and why? Thanks!

 

[Damselfish]

I would take peak buoyancy AND night, and skip either boat or naturalist.

While there is stuff to be learned about boat diving, much is different on every boat and you will get a mini-course every time you dive from a new boat. Between that and just reading whatever the book has to say about it, good chance you won't learn much more by wasting one of your AOW dives on it.

You may learn stuff in naturalist, and it may be fun, but probably won't improve your diving skills which I think is better to focus on when making AOW choices. I'd probably choose this over boat though, especially if it is taught by someone really into this and good at it.

I think search & recovery would be another good choice.

 

[Agility]

I second Damselfish
At 0-24 dives any tips on buoyancy refinement will be helpful

 

[Dirty-Dog]

I agree. The boat dive course is silly. And there are countless books out there that will serve you better than the ID course. You'll need the books specific to the places you dive anyway so what good is the class?
Practice buoyancy. Then practice it some more.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

 

[dive_turkey]

I just completed my Advanced Class in which I took Peak Performance Buoyancy, EANx, and Dry Suit diving. I tried to select dives that would give me the opportunity to learn new skills that I would need later or would help me over the couse of my full diving career.

 

[Andy Lazar]

If I'm an OW with my Nitrox card does that class count as one of my 3 electives for AOW?

 

[bluejaykaren]

Peak Performance Buoyancy for sure. It will make you a better, safer, diver for all of your future diving including when you do take the night dive class. I have done the Ocean Frontiers UV dive and it was awesome and you don't have to be night diver certified for it.

My daughter has Padi AOW and she crossed over to SSI because that is what our favorite local shop is. They counted all of her Padi certs except UW Naturalist. She still enjoyed the class but it didn't really count as dive training.

 

[billinwilliamston]

My $.02 worth.

I agree with what the others have said about the boat dive. I know that the big advantage to the boat dive specialty is that you basically don't have to do anything to get that one knocked off since you're on the boat anyway.

There are two ways to go when doing your advanced. One is to chose things that you were going to do anyway and that you want to do. For a lot of people that means that they get a piece of paper that lets them dive deeper without a babysitter, but they don't really learn much and they're not an appreciably better diver than they were before they took the course. This is the option that most go with and it's what gives AOW the reputation of being all but useless.

The other is to chose ones you don't want to do and things that you're not good at. Forgo the fun stuff and do things like buoyancy and search and recovery. It won't be as much fun, but you will be a much, much better diver after all is said and done.

Either way, you're still in the water and you're still breathing compressed air, so all is good.

Have fun!

 

[divezonescuba]

What did you end up doing?

If you haven't gone yet or for future readers, here are some other considerations.

If you are planning on continuing your diving education, search and recovery will better prepare you for both rescue and divemaster. In rescue you have both an individual exercise and a entire scenario where you have to search for a victim. In divemaster, you have to set up a search and recovery dive or already be search and recovery specialty certified.

Some places will not let you do a night dive unless you have already done one before. So if you do night as part of your AOW course, you should be able to go on any subsequent night dive.