PADI Divemaster without Advanced?

[chrisp10000]

Hi,

A strange question, and it doesn’t apply to me or anyone I know, promise!

It seems that for Divemaster, you need to be Rescue certified. Makes sense.

For Rescue, you’d imagine that you need to be Advanced certified. But you actually only need “Adventure Diver” plus a Nav dive.

Advanced is pretty much the same as Adventure, but with a little theory, a Nav dive and a Deep dive.

Does this mean you can be Divemaster certified, without ever having done your Advanced or potentially ever having exceeded 18m?

To clarify again, this does not apply to me, I have done my Advanced already and I’m thinking of going for Rescue and Divemaster. I’m just wondering if this is a real loophole, and if there’s some interesting reason why it might be intentional.

(Maybe to allow Divemaster certs in areas where dive sites don’t exceed 18m..?)

I tried searching but I couldn’t hit on the right key words.

Thanks

Chris

 

[Wibble]

Advanced isn't advanced! It should be called "Additional Open Water"

To become a DiveMaster one would expect considerable experience in all sorts of conditions and a demonstrable "mastery" of scuba diving. You can't gain that in 50 dives. It's often said that just because the card says DiveMaster it's no guarantee of excellence.


Your progression should be to go diving and build up enough experience -- with a drysuit -- to do the Rescue Diver course. IMHO Rescue is the best of the PADI recreational diving courses. It's a tough course especially if done in the UK sea.

Then go diving! There's thousands of wrecks to play on!

 

[FF / EMT]

Unpopular opinion, advanced is a worthless certification and it’s way for agencies to milk more money out of divers

 

[Wibble]

Unpopular opinion, advanced is a worthless certification and it’s way for agencies to milk more money out of divers

Not as bad as "Master Scuba Diver"!

 

[chrisp10000]

Agree with both your points, I certainly didn’t feel especially Advanced after my Advanced

My question could be rephrased as, “Does the PADI Divemaster card even guarantee that this person has been below 18m?”

If there are “Divemasters” walking around who have not even seen 19m I think that’s of interest!

 

[Wibble]

My question could be rephrased as, “Does the PADI Divemaster card even guarantee that this person has been below 18m?”

One would hope so, but as you've discovered maybe not!

DiveMaster is a "Pro" course. It's sold to recreational divers as a kind of dive leading qualification, but it's main purpose is to work in a shop (LDS - local dive shop) as an Instructor's assistant and dogsbody, possibly guiding customers around dive sites. It massively varies with the type of dive shop with it being very much a full time job in warm, clear dive locations worldwide.


Assuming you're new to diving, the main tip is to not get caught up in the whole PADI scene but to go and enjoy diving. Courses are good, but only if they're of use to your diving. Getting to Rescue Diver is a good goal; then stop as you don't need to go any further as there's lots of things you could do. Sure, going down the DM -> Instructor route is fine, but you need experience to back you up. There's the technical route of diving well beyond the recreational limits be that deep, long duration or both and using exotic equipment. There's caving and overhead diving. Photography.... etc, etc.

But most of all there's a load of decent diving you can enjoy, be that the UK's massive range of wrecks or flying away to warmer climes and enjoying colourful flora and fauna.

 

[tursiops]

It seems that for Divemaster, you need to be Rescue certified. Makes sense.

The premise is wrong. From the Instructor Manual:

Diver Prerequisites​

• Certified as a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver and PADI Rescue Diver​

And also:

At time of certification, verify the candidate has:​

• Logged at least 60 scuba dives including experience in night diving, deep diving and underwater navigation.​

 

[chrisp10000]

Thanks Wibble for the advice and tursiops for completing the answer!

 

[tursiops]

Logged at least 60 scuba dives including experience in night diving, deep diving and underwater navigation.

I interpret this (for DMs I've trained) to mean diving experience, not just taking a class. So if someone has a full Night specialty, and a full Deep specialty, and full Navigation specialty, but has not used those skills on their own while actually diving, that's not good enough. And AOW is certainly not "experience" in those three topics, either.

Reminding all the relentless PADI critics that "advanced" in AOW means advanced beyond OW....that's all. Quibble the semantics all you want, but that is how the course is designed and marketed. Suck it up.

 

[boulderjohn]

Reminding all the relentless PADI critics that "advanced" in AOW means advanced beyond OW....that's all. Quibble the semantics all you want, but that is how the course is designed and marketed. Suck it up.

Yep.

The name of the course is a relic of an instructional past. It makes no sense today, but once names are created, it is hard to end them. PADI tried to change things for many years, calling the course "Adventures in Diving," but they pretty much had to keep the name of the certification to avoid confusion.

In the early to mid 1960s, there were not many agencies teaching scuba, and there were essentially only two certifications you could get--diver and instructor. The Los Angeles program noted that the overwhelming majority of divers were getting their diver certification and then stopping diving altogether. In an attempt to rectify that situation, they created a new certification program, one that would introduce divers to a variety of dive experiences in the hope that something would pique their interest and keep them diving. Since this new certification class was the most advanced class you could take at that time, they called it "advanced."

NAUI, the agency formed by former members of the Los Angeles program, followed suit almost immediately. Those two programs created what we now know as "advanced" certification today. At the time, it was indeed the most advanced certification available (other than instructor).

At roughly the same time, NAUI was facing potential bankruptcy, and it decided to withdraw from the national market and focus on California. Accordingly, it canceled an instructor training program scheduled for Chicago. The Chicago branch of NAUI was understandably peeved, and saw its only recourse as becoming its own agency. It called itself PADI, but it still used the NAUI methods of instruction, including the names of its certifications.