Question Looking for a dive shop recommendation AOW with cavern (Florida/Cancun)

[tursiops]

I'd like to see if I can include a cavern dive as part of AOW.

From what I saw in Mexico when I was there for full cave in August, the cenote recreational dives are a two dive thing. That seems to be the case from reading posts here. A cenote dive guide has to be minimum of an open water divemaster and must be full cave certified. There are no requirements that guides be cavern/cave instructors. A guide is going to have up to three divers total.

You would need to find an AOW instructor who was also a cenote cavern guide, who was willing to do private dives. It would not likely be cheap.

If you do a cavern dive as one of your five AOW dives, your instructor needs to be a Cavern Instructor, and can have no more than 2 students. Also, one of the standards is:

If entering a cavern, limit the dive to within the light zone and within 40 metres/130 feet from the surface, vertical and horizontal distance included.​

The cenote tours I've been on/witnessed likely violate this restriction.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I agree with @Marie13. Doing a single cavern dive as part of the AOW course sounds very unusual, if it's even possible at all in Mexico (for the reason @tursiops stated). If you want to try a cenote dive, just do that. Take the AOW course separately.

 

[Snoegie]

From what I saw in Mexico when I was there for full cave in August, the cenote recreational dives are a two dive thing. That seems to be the case from reading posts here. A cenote dive guide has to be minimum of an open water divemaster and must be full cave certified. There are no requirements that guides be cavern/cave instructors. A guide is going to have up to three divers total.

You would need to find an AOW instructor who was also a cenote cavern guide, who was willing to do private dives. It would not likely be cheap.

I think your best bet is to take a dive trip to Coz, do your AOW, then do cenote dives as part of the trip, but not AOW.

Ah, this makes sense why I have had a harder time finding AOW with caverns as one of the specialty options. Thanks for educating me on this. I'll probably do as you suggest then and look for a cenote guided tour as something to do as well, rather than part of AOW.

 

[Marie13]

If you do a cavern dive as one of your five AOW dives, your instructor needs to be a Cavern Instructor, and can have no more than 2 students. Also, one of the standards is:

If entering a cavern, limit the dive to within the light zone and within 40 metres/130 feet from the surface, vertical and horizontal distance included.​

The cenote tours I've been on/witnessed likely violate this restriction.

The AOW instructor also needing to be cavern instructor is the part I missed. Thanks.

I expected standards would likely be violated, but wasn’t sure of the details.

 

[PEDiver]

A lot of people commenting here without actually giving any advice or just being plain wrong. You can take AOW and do the cavern specialty as part of the class. I did this in my AOW years ago and it's what got me into cave diving today.

If you want a FL-based shop recommendation, PM me. I can't speak for Cancun.

 

[tursiops]

A lot of people commenting here without actually giving any advice or just being plain wrong. You can take AOW and do the cavern specialty as part of the class. I did this in my AOW years ago and it's what got me into cave diving today.

If you want a FL-based shop recommendation, PM me. I can't speak for Cancun.

What do you think is wrong?