Ranking of Scuba Specialty courses

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To me it's nitrox, drysuit, deep and wreck. Basically the things that are harder to do/learn yourself or that prevent you from doing something (like diving Silfra without a drysuit speaciality or renting a tank with nitrox for an extended somewhat deeper dive (like 30m). PPB is basically useless because just diving more enables you to learn buoyancy (usually) but I took it anyways as a starting diver to get a bit more guidance.
 
PPB is basically useless because just diving more enables you to learn buoyancy (usually)
PPB covers buoyancy and fin kicks. If a student has good buoyancy, then you spend your time with them on frog kicks, back kicks, etc.
 
Most want whatever their instructor plants in their head. Nitrox and AOW are no brainer next courses. As far as “Specialties”. I would guess Deep, NAV, and Night would be the most common...usually as part of AOW.
 
Looking back over my student records, the most popular specialty courses I've taught, in descending order, are:

Drysuit (by a considerable margin)
Deep
Nitrox
Wreck
PPB

Our LDC are pretty good at assigning instructors to courses based on their area of knowledge / interest. Mine is more tech based so I tend to focus on the first three, as entry tech prerequisites. This helps me form an early relationship and carry out an informal assessment of prospective tech students if this is their future goal.

Other instructors at our Dive Centre often focus on specialties with a medical, commercial, photographic, environmental or ecological slant, depending on their own background and expertise.

As with all instructors, I have specialty courses I like doing more than others. There's no point trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and it would be doing the student a disservice to teach something you don't have a personal interest in.
 
PPB is basically useless because just diving more enables you to learn buoyancy

No no and thrice no!

The core skills (buoyancy, finning and trim) are vital for effective diving. These are frequently appalling in recreational divers AND DiveMASTERS. Nailing core skills makes diving safer, massively easier, facilitates new skills (photography, decompression diving) and protects both others (silty scissor kick!) and the environment (no touch).

No person can (or should if being pedantic) move on to more advanced diving until they have excellent core skills. Especially if doing tecreational** diving, such as wreck penetration, deco, multi-gas, photography.

The dire state of DiveMASTER skills is the root of this. They should all have good to exemplary core skills, especially ALL finning techniques: flutter, frog, helicopter turns, back-finning, etc.



** Tecreational -- more advanced recreational, but encroaching in to technical diving. Deeper, additional gas, moderate deco, overhead (wrecks, caverns). i.e. pushing it to the limits of recreational.
 
HI
I my view most of these "specialties" should be part of the ow-aow and not taken as independant units.
 
HI
I my view most of these "specialties" should be part of the ow-aow and not taken as independant units.
Do you mean the OW-AOW sequence should contain 30-40 dives?
 

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