SCUBA shop that will issue be an AOW card after a few days diving?

[Bob DBF]

The other for profit agencies (NAUI, etc.) arrived a few years later.

NAUI has always been a non-profit organization.

 

[Wookie]

Unless you mean that there is no legal or insurance requirement, but instead it's a shop/boat policy.

That's exactly what I meant and I apologize if I wasn't clear.

I have no beef with a dive shop that makes up a policy whether it's annual VIPs or requiring an AOW card for boat dives, or for oil rig dives. I didn't, but that's just me.

I ran and owned a liveaboard for 20 years. We likely had more onerous rules than any other liveaboard on the planet, and we enforced them with a SubSafe like rigidity that definitely turned off may potential customers from booking trips on our boat.

Run out of air? You were done diving for the entire trip. No exceptions, and no amount of whining was going to get you back in the water. Exceed 130 foot depth? You were going to sit out for 24 hours. Forgot to turn your computer on? Switch to tables and dive within the tables until you were clean, then you could follow the computer again. Diving tables? Tell us your dive plan upon getting in the water, and tells us again what you dove when you surfaced. But it was my boat, my rules, and I didn't try to pass my rules off on some faceless entity that no one could check up on. I owned the rules, I actually inherited them from the previous owner.

I remember a very well known dive operator in the upper Keys that everyone here on ScubaBoard knows, or at least knows his shop, who once said "you'd have a lot more business if you were nicer to your clients". He was likely correct, but I had made a conscious decision to take divers who could follow simple dive rules rather than be "nice" to those who couldn't.

 

[Bob DBF]

Ice diver has AOW as a prerequisite.

Depends:
PADI yes
SSI no
NAUI no, but it is considered technical diving and has a diffrent path.

So I would check the Agency for their actual requirements.

 

[boulderjohn]

NAUI has always been a non-profit organization.

I have seen it posted in the past that NAUI has been at least partially for profit for many years. I don't know how that works.

 

[boulderjohn]

An AOW diver can have 9 dives in total. Good luck wid dat.

But that diver has a card saying that an agency has certified him to be trained to that deeper depth. If there is a problem, it is the fault of the agency that certified him, not the operator that accepted the certification.

 

[Altamira]

From a legal perspective, I can't say whether or not a requirement to have an AOW cert would hold up in court if an accident were to happen. But I definitely know boats that require AOW for dives deeper than 60'. Unless you mean that there is no legal or insurance requirement, but instead it's a shop/boat policy.

In my opinion, this type of operation/policy is just another way to take more of your money and put it in their wallet. You pay for the dive, and also for an additional DM. I have run into this scam on a few occasions, and I just say "Fine, I'll stay at 60ft, I like it better there than at 100+ft anyway." After 5 minutes of diving, it seems like the 60ft "limit" disappears, and I am diving the same as everyone else. Over the years, I have learned to avoid these last minute issues by sending my dive computer log, and physician's letter to the dive op long before arrival. If they still insist on AOW, I just find somewhere else to dive, or something else to do. Life is too short to put up with BS.

 

[Bob DBF]

I have seen it posted in the past that NAUI has been at least partially for profit for many years. I don't know how that works.

Don't get me started on "non-profit" organizations. It isn't that they can't make money, it's how they do it, thats why accountants and tax lawyers prosper.

 

[boulderjohn]

In my opinion, this type of operation/policy is just another way to take more of your money and put it in their wallet. You pay for the dive, and also for an additional DM. I have run into this scam on a few occasions, and I just say "Fine, I'll stay at 60ft, I like it better there than at 100+ft anyway." After 5 minutes of diving, it seems like the 60ft "limit" disappears, and I am diving the same as everyone else. Over the years, I have learned to avoid these last minute issues by sending my dive computer log, and physician's letter to the dive op long before arrival. If they still insist on AOW, I just find somewhere else to dive, or something else to do. Life is too short to put up with BS.

I run into this rule every winter while I am in Florida, where all the shops I know of require AOW for certain dives. You can't say you will be above 60 feet. You are either on the boat for the dive or you aren't. These dives are all to wrecks, so there is nothing to see but water above 60 feet. I have never seen that rule invoked on a dive where there is really any option for a shallower dive.

So let me ask a question of the people that say shops should use a diver's experience instead. How would you make it work?

On a typical dive I experience in Florida, divers sign up for the dive ahead of time, usually online. Some of them (including me) are known commodities. They are in the system already. Many are not. They are vacationers who are in town for a week at most. They show up at the shop and show a certification card. They get whatever gear they need and get on the boat.

So how would it work for them if you required a certain level of experience for the dive instead of a simple AOW card? Would some employee (let's say a guy named Fred) have the job of determining the worthiness of each diver's experience? Would divers have to show Fred their logbook? If they show a paper logbook, would Fred have to leaf through it to judge if the dives are legitimate and not faked? If they have a computer logbook, would they have to bring in a laptop to show their experience? If they show a dive computer log, would Fred have to figure out a way to make sure it isn't a borrowed computer or one purchased off of eBay? What if they didn't know they would need to prove their experience and didn't bring any logbook? What if they do not log their dives? What if they have hundreds of dives, but none of them are in the last 30 years?

 

[Outbound]

I don't really understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to AOW. If you are a relatively new diver, the course will get you some more dives, more experience, and more useful training. That extra training is particularly good if your additional adventure dives are in solid specialties. If you are already an experienced diver, then just sign up and take the class, pass with ease, get your card, and move on. Yeah, it costs some extra money. But if you were looking for a cheap activity, diving ain't it. And if you really don't want to spend the money out of some misplaced sense of principle, then don't. But don't complain when a dive op or boat says you can't dive with them. It's no secret that requiring AOW for deeper dives is pretty much standard these days.

 

[Still Kicking]

I don't really understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to AOW. If you are a relatively new diver, the course will get you some more dives, more experience, and more useful training. That extra training is particularly good if your additional adventure dives are in solid specialties. If you are already and experienced diver, then just sign up and take the class, pass with ease, get your card, and move on. Yeah, it costs some extra money. But if you were looking for a cheap activity, diving ain't it. And if you really don't want to spend the money out of some sense of misplaced principle, then don't. But don't complain when a dive op or boat says you can't dive with them. It's no secret that requiring AOW for deeper dives is pretty much standard these days.

Running a dive boat is a huge liability exposure. So I think boat owners are entitled to take some reasonable steps to protect themselves. Requiring a card beyond OW shows some con-ed -- even if its value is debatable -- and it shifts some liability to the certifying agency, as others said.

If divers don't agree with those steps, they are free to buy their own boat, invite their buddies and set their own policies on who dives where.

Suddenly, that AOW class won't seem so expensive after all.