Ranking of Scuba Specialty courses

[scubadada]

At least you should not be able to go from OW to AOW witout any out of course dive experienceS

As you probably know, with PADI, you can get OW, AOW, and be nitrox certified with 9 training dives.

I dived with a young, very fit, Navy man, who had just finished this pathway, on the Duane in Key Largo. We had a discussion before the dive, he was confident in his skills. There was very significant current at the surface and below, he struggled. He went through his gas to below the agreed upon notification level in less than 15 min. I took him back to the line, did the safety stop, watched him surface, and go up the ladder. I went on to finish my dive. He was humbled by the experience and likely learned a lot. The second, shallow dive, on the Benwood, went just fine.

 

[tursiops]

At least you should not be able to go from OW to AOW witout any out of course dive experienceS

Isn't that exactly the point of the AOW?

 

[Martijn]

Isn't that exactly the point of the AOW?

IMHO: Thats exactly the point of AOW

Just like everyone else here, Nitrox is the specialty course I taught most .... BY FAR.

After that, and in this order:
Self Reliant
PPB
Deep
Navigation

Way further down is Wreck, and somewhere on the bottom I found myself 1 night diver specialty

 

[jale]

Isn't that exactly the point of the AOW?

No. The dive experienceS you do during your AOW are mainly BS
Would feel ashame if one of my students needs PPB, Navig, Nx and simillar stuff.
Now, of course I don't teach OW to 8 people in 3 days and I understand that "resort instructors" don't have much choices and that new divers are happy enough with a short courses...

 

[tursiops]

The dive experienceS you do during your AOW are mainly BS

Are you talking about the way you teach them or the way others teach them?

 

[Cdncoldwater]

No. The dive experienceS you do during your AOW are mainly BS
Would feel ashame if one of my students needs PPB, Navig, Nx and simillar stuff.
Now, of course I don't teach OW to 8 people in 3 days and I understand that "resort instructors" don't have much choices and that new divers are happy enough with a short courses...

I would agree to a point. I'm not an instructor or DM but when I did my AOW one dive was underwater photography; no value to me at all. I had about 20 dives by this time but was sipping the Kool aid as far as "specialties" went and was planning on pursuing some such as Nav and search and recovery. I dive in low vis water almost exclusively so I soon realized that Nav could be developed on my own (I had a lot of experience with compass nav on the surface) and the search and recovery for what I would do I gained through practice and courses such as rescue. I learned something on every course but I learned more diving with experienced divers and soon realized that some / most specialty courses are more about marketing than anything else.

 

[jale]

Are you talking about the way you teach them or the way others teach them?

It is not about who is teaching but about what people learn in 5 dives

 

[tursiops]

It is not about who is teaching but about what people learn in 5 dives

I hope you did not say what you meant to say. What you said was that the teaching is irrelevant to what the people learn. What did you mean to say?

 

[tursiops]

soon realized that some / most specialty courses are more about marketing than anything else.

Now you are sipping the anti-PADI Koolaid on SB, even though PADI did not invent specialty courses.
If you learned nothing on a specialty course, then your instructor was at fault. You apparently had crappy instructors. Sorry.

 

[tomcatbubba]

For the shop I teach out of, AOW is by far the most popular, because we typically run them back to back with OW during a quarry weekend with a pretty good price break. Plus people have already paid quarry fees, so its really easy and much cheaper to do it this way. Do I agree with OW going right in to AOW? It depends. Some people I would say no, they are so task loaded from the OW course that they need some time to decompress (figuratively) and dive a bit before jumping in to what can be more task loading than they are ready for. Follow this by Nitrox and then Rescue.

For me personally, I think my most common courses are nitrox, rescue, sidemount, TEC40, and self reliant, in that order. We don't have a lot of good places to do deep around here, so I don't teach that a whole lot unless I travel. I should say though, I like teaching these classes, and seem to get good word of mouth from students, so that probably skews the answer a bit. I'm sure if I were awesome at underwater photography (I'm not), I would get a decent amount of those students.