Night dives = AOW?

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

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

racerx_

Contributor
Messages
390
Reaction score
73
Location
Singapore
# of dives
100 - 199
Was talking with a friend who recently got certified and is going diving soon. He mentioned how only one member of their group would be doing a night dive as she was the only one with AOW certification.

Not sure if it's the same everywhere but many dive ops out here require advanced certification to do night dives (unless you had a specialty I guess), and it got me wondering why that is. I never really though about this before as I did my advanced right after open water, but is there some reason for such a standard? I don't think my AOW really did much in terms of training me to dive at night any more so than someone taking me on a night dive would have.. Thoughts?
 
I think that a night dive is one of the elective dives for PADI AOW. That being said, I've done dozens of night dives and never had an operator require an AOW for it. (although a display of in-water competence certainly is a good idea and has been a requirement with some operators)
 
Yeah it is.. Like I said might be different other places, but out here it's usually a pre-requisite to night dive
 
I can certainly understand an operator requiring training or prior experience in night diving. It's not rocket science but there are some techniques, etiquette and a mentality to doing it safely. I flubbed up my last one and had an awkward exit and night time was a real contributor to that.

Requiring AOW without confirming night diving content is worthless as it's not generally a requirement.


Pete
 
Local laws may apply to some places. Certain operators may require it- that is their right as a service provider in this industry.

An AOW course doesn't make someone suddenly capable of doing a night dive. For example the PADI AOW is proof of nothing more than 5 experience dives under the eye of an instructor who may or may not provide some actual training along the way. Of course one of those five experience dives may well be a Night Dive- in that there is at least a briefing on signalling procedures etc.

The original idea of a diving certificate is to be able to dive independently of professionals in conditions similar or better than those in which you were trained. The AOW is expanding the range of those activities... and this is where IMO it fails to address some very real concerns on safety- especially at depths below 3ata.
 
When I was an open water diver, I was in Brazil at a famous (within Brazil) dive destination. When the two-tank morning outing was wrapping up, the instructor on board asked, "Anybody interested in a night dive tonight?" And I was, so I said so! Then when we went to the shop so I could pay for the night dive, they looked at my sign-in sheet and saw I didn't have AOW. They said AOW wasn't required, but at least the Night Diving class was, so I signed up for the class, did my night dive, loved it, and got back on the boat the next morning for more dives. The instructor then said, "Why not just finish up the whole AOW now?" It was easy to talk me into it with 20% of it already done, LOL.

Here in Thailand, we don't require AOW or Night adventure dive training on our liveaboards although I personally recommend it strongly. We just give divers a very good briefing about light use and signalling, and off we all go! However, a good number of people on their first night dive do freak out a bit before the dive because they really don't know what to expect not having really discussed night diving in the way we do during training. They're usually pretty happy afterwards, though. If it were up to me, I'd skip most night dives, but somehow my customers always want to do them....
 
I am taking naui AOW now and night / limited viz is one of the 3 that are required for the 6 dives.
 
socaljohn, my AOW was NAUI, but unless I'm mistaken, I had to do only five dives. The required ones were Deep, Nav, Night. And I also did Search and Wreck. I really don't remember a sixth dive for it....has it changed?
 
Might be an instructor requirement. NAUI allows them to set their own requirements. I require six for my Advanced Level Two (formerly AOW) and Night/Low Vis is one of the mandatory dives. And makes sense because around here below 40 - 60 ft at high noon can be a night dive in some of our lakes and quarries. :depressed:
 
NAUI requires three dives (nav, deep dive, night/low viz) and three elective dives. The elective dives allow adaptations for local environments (altitude, surf,etc.).
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom