What you perceive as "fluff" is not what others may perceive.
If a course is taught well, not just to minimum requirements, all courses carry value.
I really can't see why people get so het up on the MSD rating. It is an individual's choice if they want to spend the money on it. Just because you don't want to spend for it, doesn't mean no-one should.
I agree with you there.....some people will perceive many of these specialties as substantive.
They should take multiple specialties and support their LDS. Nothing wrong with that. We all have to feed the machine.
I've learned something from this thread.
Master Diver is earned. You have to have demonstrated mastery of 5 specialties. Before tackling that challenge, you have to be an Advanced Diver, so the in the water skills are going to be very good.
It is PADI's highest non-professional rating.
From what I have gathered from this thread, there would be far less cluster****ery on dive boats if there were more Master Divers out there. By the time someone has made it through all of those specialties, they have had so much time under the guidance of the professional instructor corps, they would be very highly skilled indeed.
Actually....doesn't the whole Master diver approach justify the PADI approach to multiple bite size classes as opposed to the longer classes that are taught by other classes?
We always hear that argument from people on this board when people make fun of the short PADI classes. Or the critism that the Advanced class doesn't teach advanced dive skills?
Maybe in the PADI training pipeline, your training isn't really complete until you have earned the rating of Master Diver.
It seems to me that a Master Diver would be the equivalent of a student from one of the long courses.
The only way to know would be from seeing how divers looked in the water.
Maybe PADI got it right....if you always wanted the higher skills that are taught in the longer courses out there......this will achieve the same thing, no?
Imagine how many dives you will have had with an instructor, how many hours in the classroom by the time you finish. I hope the PADI master diver program is producing highly skilled divers. If it isn't....then instructors are failing.
If it IS producing those types of divers....then in the end, it's a good thing. I have never dove with a Master Diver, so I have no idea what the skills look like.
As with everything....the proof is in the product. Maybe the reason instructors on this board defend the Master Diver program, is because it's the culmination of all of that Instructor/Student dive time.
PADI's equivalent to the long course.
I would hope that the displayed diver skill is much better than the Advanced class standard.
It should be....... if students are getting their money's worth.
How many dives would you have with an instructor by the time you earned a Master Diver rating?
As a Master Diver....will you look like you have had a lot of dives under the wing of instructor(s)?
Cheers,
Mitch
