PADI AOW+ certs and depth rating

[JackD342]

View attachment 527288

So that does support the two different depths, depending on context.
And apparently I stand corrected at this point on the 40 foot limit for the skills portion. I can't find anything to support that, so now I am racking my brain on why I thought that. Standards change? False memory? Dreamed it up?

 

[Graeme Fraser]

Interesting. When I did my CMAS3 cert this spring, I learned that our instructors aren't allowed to take their students below 30m. So our deco training dives were simulated, keeping our true depth less than 30m.

There was some joking about escaping the instructor by going deeper than that...

PADI Deep Spec qualifies the student to max 40m. If conditions, student proficiency, and ratios allow, I aim to get them below 35m on dive 3. That way they can experience and appreciate the affects in a controlled, supervised environment rather than heading blind into unknown narcosis, gas and short NDL territory post qualification. I stress that the ticket is far more beneficial for say a 32m multilevel dive on Nitrox than a short bounce just to log a target depth.

 

[scubadada]

I was previously certified by LACUU. In 1997, I was recertified with my 12 year son by PADI in Grand Cayman. On our 1st post certification dive, we went to 95 feet. On our 3rd, we went to 100 ft. Our training dives were to 40. 40, 60, and 60 feet.

A few years later we went to 108 ft for the deep AOW dive and went to 130 ft for the deep specialty.

 

[NAM001]

This is not correct. OW training max depth is 60 ft.
The rest of you post is therefore moot.

I have yet to find an instructor or a student that was allowed to train deeper than 40 ft. The instructors say it is a training standard. I will conceed that perhaps one day there are 3 dives and that may place a training limit of 40 ft. The real meat of it is that you train in shallow water. Then impose a set of """RECOMENDED LIIMITS"""" And then with less than 10 dives the system allows them to go to 100+ ft because the OW card is good for 130 ft. No one argues the rec limit is 130 ft. What is argued is the "to date" level training and whether it is adaquate for the deep dives. Even your manuals say do not conduct dives you have not been trained for or have the experience to do. When my wife got her OW she asked how deep the class would take her. She was told 25-30 ft because as an instructor in a class,,,,,,training standards did not allowed him to take an OW student deeper than 40 ft. Upon completing she had to sign a document stating she understood her limits of 60 ft no everhead's ect in order to get her card. So no matter what is right or wrong what you are describing is not what happens in the field.

 

[NAM001]

PADI Deep Spec qualifies the student to max 40m. If conditions, student proficiency, and ratios allow, I aim to get them below 35m on dive 3. That way they can experience and appreciate the affects in a controlled, supervised environment rather than heading blind into unknown narcosis, gas and short NDL territory post qualification. I stress that the ticket is far more beneficial for say a 32m multilevel dive on Nitrox than a short bounce just to log a target depth.

WOW that is the way it should be done. You observe then in 100+ ft be fore you give them there deep cert. You would think that OW would utilize the near full depth range of hte cert and AOW would take you to near 100 ft. unfortunately too often Ow's are sent out never being deeper than 25 ft adn AOW's not seeing deeper dives than 65 ft. Then things are compunded by doing back to back OW and AOW then make the plunge to the Ocean bottom at 80-100+ ft. I agree that what happens after the class is beyond the instructors control. Unfortunately there are the boats and they do not care for anything other than the buck.

 

[David Leach]

Perhaps it simply means the mailer itself is not a certification card.

This is exactly correct. The plastic card is the “certification card” and the bottom third of the mailer page itself is the “validation card.” They recommend keeping the validation card in your records in case you ever lose your C-card and need to request a replacement. The PADI Certification Card Replacement Form (PDF) allows you to skip Section 2 if you are able to provide a copy of your validation card, and mentions that every PADI certification card issued after 1980 included a validation card.

Of course, you can also now just order a replacement C-card online, which does not require a validation card or the Certification Card Replacement Form anyway. Nevertheless, I just got my brand new PADI AOW C-card in the mail last week and it included the validation card mailer.

 

[afieldofblue]

Fascinating stuff - thanks for all the input.

I have read a friend's email to PADI asking if it was allowed to take an Open Water diver below 18m in a non-training context, provided that they have experience below this depth. Answer was a little twisted, but all in all it was a yes.

I guess my initial example holds forth for training. A friend got told off for taking a DMT to 35 m on his deep-dive scenario during the DM course, and this seems justified as it is indeed a training context (DM course), so standards apply, and the Deep Dive max depth is given in the IM for training.


However the fun diving + guiding part is more murky.

Question remaining - if a guide takes a OW diver to 32m, and something happens, will PADI consider this to be a breach of safe practices, affecting backing of the said guide?
Whill an insurance company such as DAN consider it problematic?

Or does it all come down to justifying the diver's experience at that depth when establishing negligence, good judgment etc?


I'm a little wary of the ISO standard - A DM is a dive leader, in CMAS equivalent this would be 3* in most places, 4* in France. Dive leader has an ISO code.
As a French PA60 N3 / CMAS *** certified (this is an actual cert, as legally specified in the French Code du Sport) my max depth is the max legal rating, ie 60m autonomous ( the notion of autonomy is slightly different than in a RSTC setting), and this is all in the same ISO rating as a RSTC DM for instance.
However in the French system the actual dive leader cert is an N4 "guide de palanquée" cert (same PA60 depth rating).... Both are covered by the same ISO code.

Fascinating stuff though!

 

[afieldofblue]

Come on, this is a silly argument. By this logic, no one would ever be able to take "deep" training because they're not already "certified" to go to the depth required for the training.

Not sure where you are finding the "breach of PADI standards" in taking a DM candidate deeper than 30m. There is nothing in the standards that says "deep dive for DM candidate must not exceed 30 m."

Can you point me to the explicit limit on the deep dive for the DM course?

Not really silly - the training for that depth is what allows them to reach the max depth as set in the training standards. Which is why you can't take a diver to 35m in the AOW course's Deep Adventure Dive for instance, but can in dive 3 of the Deep Diver Specialy.
And the DM course is a training course, implying that the Deep Dive Scenario constitues a training dive.

Regarding the actual explicit limit on the deep dive for the DM course, this is simply the one set by the definition of a Deep Dive, on page 21 of the IM manual

A deep dive is conducted at a depth between 18 to 30 metres/60 to 100 feet.


Exceptions: Some courses such as Deep Diver and TecRec courses allow for greater depths.


These "exceptions" are what allow for access to 30 to 40m in training (ie Deep Diver Spec) and beyond (Tec Rec's Tec40, Tec 50...).

Everyone agrees this is for training only. But while could argue for taking a DMT to 35m on a fun dive, one would be breaching standards by taking the same DMT to 35m during the Deep Dive Scenario

 

[afieldofblue]

Yes, they are different. As tursiops explained above:

PADI standards establish the limitations for instructors when they are working with students.

A certified diver can do whatever they want. PADI recommends that divers use common sense, dive conservatively and within the limits of their training. But PADI does not command divers to do things. Divers make their own decisions.

Fair enough, but what of a dive guide / dive leader / DM. Are they also free to ignore diver ratings and plan the dives based on their assessment of the diver's experience? Would this hold in case an accident happens?

A dive guide explaining that they considered it would be fine to take an OW diver with 30 dives to say, 35m, would not cause problems with PADI/ insurance/authorities?

Quite a few national parks in Asia set a max depth for recreational diving, I know this is the case in the Similans and Surin in Thailand (30m, no intentional decompression stop diving), and think it's also the case in Komodo in Indonesia, so in this case guiding beyond this set max depth is not respecting local regulations, which orgs. such as PADI clearly state should supersede their own standards and recommendations.

Thanks for the input - I'm not trying to argue for the sake of it, just trying to get a better view of something which is apprently understood in different ways, as I've heard many interpretations.

Current dive shop I work for adamantly states OW divers are allowed to dive to 18m, AOW to 30m, and AOW+ Deep Spec down to 40m (but would need to check on the national park's max depth for rec diving) - this is for fun diving - no exceptions.
When dealing with CMAS divers with different depth ratings, in mixed group apply PADI standards, if only them then their own ratings (20m, 40m).

Another dive shop I work for, like many others in Asia, offer OW divers the option of doing the Adventure Deep Dive to "unlock" the 30m depth "rating" - which, in the light of this discussion does not really exist.

If I understand well, the main difference between an OW and AOW in terms of depth ratings is that the AOW can justify being trained to dive down to 30m (the deep adv dive) and it is possible to plan guiding this diver to such a depth without having to consider actual experience (plan can be revised of course) - whereas for a OW one would have to consider actual experience (logged dives etc) before planning such a dive...

But would this also mean that it is perfectly ok to guide a very confortable OW diver down to 22m for instance? Most shops insist that the diver is kept above his max recommended depths, some even check computers etc... Again, this is for guided fun dives, not courses.

cheers

 

[Edward3c]

Fair enough, but what of a dive guide / dive leader / DM. Are they also free to ignore diver ratings and plan the dives based on their assessment of the diver's experience? Would this hold in case an accident happens?
...

Your question(s) only become important following an incident, and the resulting claim.

I can only speak from the UK prospective. Not all dive insurance companies cover diving beyond formal training depth limits; even those that do have an exclusion clause (usually well hidden away) that if depth was a contributing factor the diver must have been formally certified to the depth. If I took a buddy past their training certification (the depth they had been formally signed off at) and there was an incident, I would be deemed to have dived outside BSAC’s Safe Diving and would have to fund my own defence, as BSAC’s 3rd Party Liability cover is based on me following the guidance.