Deep diver

[George Scherman]

What certification do I need to be"qualified to go below 65 ft? Thanks

 

[boulderjohn]

What certification do I need to be"qualified to go below 65 ft? Thanks

Technically, you should have Advanced Open Water.

The reality is another matter. If you go to a place like Cozumel, you will dive every dive with a divemaster leading you, and you will go below 65 feet on the first dive every time, regardless of your certification.

 

[Rick Inman]

What certification do I need to be"qualified to go below 65 ft? Thanks

None. There's no law to prevent anyone from diving at any depth, and a C-card doesn't mean you are "qualified". What you should have is the training and experience to safely do any dive at any depth.

PADI says you should have AOW to dive below 60'.

BTW, I see from your profile that you live in NW Montana. Come out here some time and dive with us in Lake Coeur d' Alene! There's cool wrecks and walls and stuff. It's not that far (I drive out there to fly fish all the time).

Rick

 

[friscuba]

PADI says you should have AOW to dive below 60'.


Rick

Sorry to be nit-picky, but, PADI says 100' with additional experience or training as part of the OW knowledge reviews. No 60' set depth limit.

Later,

Steve

 

[Rick Inman]

Sorry to be nit-picky, but, PADI says 100' with additional experience or training as part of the OW knowledge reviews. No 60' set depth limit.

Later,

Steve

Sorry to be nit-picky about you being nit-picky D), but, the PADI AOW book says an OW diver is qualified to 60'. To go BELOW that they say you need AOW.

Page 67 in PADI Adventures in Diving Manual (current 2002 addition) in the section under Deep Diving says,

"As a new open water diver, 18 meters/60 feet marks the depth limit to which you are qualified to dive."

An AOW diver, according to the PADI AOW book is qualified to 100'.

On the same page,

"The deep adventure dive... will give you access to some of those dive sites by qualifying you to dive as deep as 30 meters/100'."

But hey, you're the PADI instructor, not me. You would know better than I. I'm just sayin' what the book says.

 

[kazinvan]

I agree, OW is 60' and AOW is 100'. Everyone I know goes deeper though, it's just a guideline. I have AOW and I dove to 135' today with my buddy (who is an instructor). If you are comfortable with the depth and your buddy is as well I see no problem with going a little deeper than the 'max'.

 

[Iruka]

"As a new open water diver, 18 meters/60 feet marks the depth limit to which you are qualified to dive."

The depth limits are essentially recommendations, and adhered to in varying degrees by dive operations, mostly for liability & safety reasons. I'm not going to go look it up now, but I believe there is a recommendation following the quote above, which goes something like this: "do not dive deeper without additional training and/or experience."

Some places, again mostly for legal reasons, basically require the AOW card for deeper dives. My opinion is that "experience" is often neglected when a diver plans a deep dive. As a dive guide for about 10 years now, with 5,400 & some dives behind me, I'm a lot more interested in the number & KIND of dives done, than in a particular card being held. The AOW certification (in PADI) can be obtained in only 9 dives (4 OW + 5 AOW).... Some people are pretty competent after only a few dives, others are not. I urge my students & divers to try to dive as often as they can...if they'd like to take some sort of course, that's fine, but I feel it's more important to get the dives in, than worry about every dive needing to be part of a course. Here in Guam I know a lot of good divers who are "only" OW, but have hundreds of dives.

So, the short answer (too late for that now, ha ha!) to your question, in my opinion, is OW & some experience qualifies you to go deeper, if you're competent & comfortable at the shallower depths........but different dive shops may require AOW (and they're often happy to teach the AOW to you as sort of an "entrance fee" to do certain dives.)

 

[Dapher]

I would recommend you take the Advanced class. It covers Deep, Navigation (a very important skill), night and two others. The deep helps you understand how your body reacts to nitrogen narcosis as they have you do a timed task at the surface and then repeat it at depth. It can be quite surprising the difference in times. I have been thankful on more than one occasion for the NAV portion of my AOW class, the plankton bloom here can make finding your way back quite interesting and the night portion was awesome with the bioluminescence. You also get to pick two other topics that interest you like photography, or wreck diving, or search & recovery to name a few. The biggest thing to remember is to not dive past your comfort level and make sure you know the required limits for your dive. Don't wonder down to 140 feet without knowing if you need a deco stop or not. Have fun and keep learning!

 

[ScubaFreak]

Yeah theres no Depth police, but you'll probably wish there were if you went beyond your capabilities. All the PADI certs are recommended depths. The others are right about going to various locations and going deeper than 60feet, but remember, if you have an insurance cert and something happens, because you exceeded your recommended depth, they may not support your claim

scubafreak