Minimum required training to dive to 30m (100ft) with Padi
- Thread starter Porris
- Start date
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
According to this thread, that's not true.
Diving beyond cert?
Do you know how to calculate the gas needed to get yourself & buddy to the surface? You mean 500 psi right? 🤣scubaboard.com
Many of the "knowledgeable regulars" have stated that there is no specific depth limitation regardless of the level of certification up to the 130' recreational limit.
The joy of legalese versus popular interpretation of that differing, in a self-regulated industry.
The recreational depth limit is accepted and referenced by e.g. PADI as 40m/130ft.
PADI OW e-learning states only that that "Certification shows that you met the course requirements. .... As a PADI Open Water Diver, you will be trained to a maximum depth of 18 metres/60 feet (or the actual depth you reached, if shallower). You’ll also be qualified to dive in conditions as good as, or better than, those in which you trained ..." (bold mine)
That's all it says. You are trained to whatever depth you reached in your course, and is qualified to dive with a buddy similiarly trained to the same conditions that you were trained in. How many OW instructor out there are able and take their students to exactly 18m?
Similarly in in PADI AOW e-learning, it states that "Although 40 metres/130 feet is the maximum depth for recreational diving (ideally, with certification as a PADI Deep Diver), 30 metres/100 feet is the recommended limit for Advanced Open Water Divers ..." (bold mine)
Nowhere in their courses do they say "you are certified to dive to X depth". (They may say it in their blog but that's a different story.) Out in the world, it is accepted, including by insurer's terms & conditions, government (e.g. Malta's law on independent [not with an instructor] diving) etc. that equate OW as certified to 18m/60ft, AOW equiv as 30m/100ft and Deep speciality as 40m/130ft.
Say someone is AOW and in a diving accident and need to claim insurance whose T&Cs states only covers to the depth limit of their certification, I wouldn't want to be them arguing I am still within the recreational depth limit when the insurer deny coverage because they went to 31m.
Boarderguy
Chief Narctopus Wrangler
What's a "covered dive"?
There was me thinking that DAN covered pretty much all diving issues -- which is the reason I've got Sports Silver
Nothing there about recreational diving -- all is effectively "at work" (or not diving: freediving is snorkeling with another name). And what is a photographer: someone with a GoPro or a professional?
There was me thinking that DAN covered pretty much all diving issues -- which is the reason I've got Sports Silver
DAN is not the only insurance, and the US is not the only country.
It was just a feasible example. No need for where it doesn't applies.
Boarderguy
Chief Narctopus Wrangler
It's still weird. The PADI Nitrox course I took was watching the instructional video, writing the test and analyzing a couple of tanks. All of that you still need to do if you want to take the specialty. The idea of the adventure dive is to do 1 dive of a specialty. Nitrox is a diveless specialty. It does not matter that some shop have you do the course and take you out with a Nitrox tank, it's not required.
Yes, nitrox is more theory plus a little practical with analysing and marking up your cylinders.
However... wouldn't the lessons be better reinforced by planning the dive, diving the plan and executing the new skills? For example going through the need to locate an analyser, calibrate the analyser, analyse the gas, mark the tin, then diving within the "hard" depth constraints that nitrox brings. Not forgetting that you should see the benefit of longer dive times within that depth constraint.
I've found that dive shops can get quite fussy about exactly hitting the requested gas oxygen percentage. The reality is that if you're asking for, say, 32% and they give you 30% or 34% it shouldn't really matter because you shouldn't be diving to the MOD (max operating depth) of the requested gas (32%) anyway (that's 1.4 max PPO2 divided by the mix, e.g. 1.4 / 0.32 = 4.375ATA = 33m/110ft.).
The dive shop's fussiness ends up in delays as they tweak the mix and wait for it to homogenise. It's pretty pointless too as our body isn't Mr Spock's, functioning to 10 decimal places.
Similar threads
