Split from Catalina Diver died.. Advanced Certification is a joke

[DwayneJ]

Even so, honestly, I can't see any reason for DwaynJ's objection to allowing divers with less than 10 dives to do AOW.

The name needs to change and I am 100% against the "deep" dive component of AOW. As I experienced, the various courses within the AOW program are no more than "repeat after me" and thus not a representation of a divers capability to handle themselves in open water before, during, or after the training.

I can think of three recent situations where a new diver I was with compromised their own safety on the surface and at depth, and one very recent situation where a new diver chooses to ignore a medical condition.... AOW candidates and graduates by the PADI book.

 

[D_B]

Who passed them ?

PADI didnt ... The INSTRUCTOR did.
... he is the one who decides who does, and what they learn from it

 

[DwayneJ]

Who passed them ?

PADI didnt ... The INSTRUCTOR did.
... he is the one who decides who does, and what they learn from it

... but they met the cert requirements which was "repeat after me" and witnessed important instructor/cert demonistrations - The Egg, The Bottle.

 

[SteveR1952]

I am currently working on my "Adventure Dives" in preparation for my AOW cert on a Live A board next weekend. I have read the whole book and done all the tests since I don't know which dives will be done on the trip. My impression of the AOW is:

It is a sampling of some new areas for the diver to taste and see what interests them for a full course in that topic. In other words, it is an advertising scheme to create desire in the diver for more full certification classes which translates in more money for the dive agency.

To make the AOW truly an AOW cert. to me would require more in-depth education on the following areas:

*EANX teaching and a checkout dive.
*Deep dive
*Multilevel diving
*Wreck diving
*Night coupled with Navigation and low vis. skills
*Rescue I or downsized Rescue class to cover the basics of CPR, O2 management, basic First Aid and proper carries and movement within the water. Add to it a deep course on DCS and all the other stuff you can get with detailed signs and symptoms testing.

Adventure Diver Certs are cute but not practical for much. The current AOW is not much better as to depth of knowlege and actual diving skills.

I plan on getting my Rescue class done next year and along with it my EANX and deep diving certs. I will have my Drysuit cert soon. At this rate I may get to Master Scuba Diver before I am 90.

 

[Diver0001]

and one very recent situation where a new diver chooses to ignore a medical condition.... AOW candidates and graduates by the PADI book.

Are you trying to blame PADI for this? This is like blaming Smith and Wesson if you choose to shoot yourself in the foot....

Divers in training are taught to excercise good judgement and once their instructor is not there, then THEY should be expected to dive within their limits and are responsible for their actions. PADI sets standards and instructors make sure the student learns it, but if they decide not to follow their training after that, then neither PADI nor the instructor can be there to babysit everyone all the time. At some point we have to realize that divers have a personal repsonsibility for their own safety too.

How many people do you see driving around in cars who you KNOW are doing things that their dRiving instructors told them not to, or worse yet, that fly in the face of common sense....

Do you think that the government (who sets standards for drivers) is responsible for every stupid thing people do in traffic? Do you even think it's fair to blame the government whenever an accident happens or someone does something stupid?

What you're doing here is comparable to that.

R..

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Can anyone with more knowledge than me comment on the reading materials?

Recently, I had a good conversation with a man in a dive shop, who was 100% dead set on PADI because he liked their materials better.

He claimed that he tried the NAUI AOW book but returned it, because he found it completely different than his PADI OW materials, and asked for the PADI AOW book, which he was quite happy with. The difference? He says PADI has all sorts of quizzes and things which help reinforce the information and make sure you actually know it, while the NAUI book was much slimmer, and just a straight read, without knowledge checks or anything.

So I'm curious to know, are the PADI materials a joke, regardless of whether the course as a whole is a "joke" or a good or bad idea.

 

[Diver0001]

There often some discussion/criticism about certain omissions in the training materials (like gas management) but generally speaking the presentation of the material is pretty darned good. You can see the result in scuba reviews too; that even years later, most people remember the salient material with the exception of tables.

I've taken some courses from IANTD and compared to the PADI materials, the IANTD books come across as being chaotic, disjointed in places and a bit amateuristic. I've also seen one NOB text, which is a CMAS variant. Their material is richer in terms of content in some ways but the presentation in teh book I saw was "wall of text" style and would have been hard to wrestle through.

I don't know about any others.

R..

 

[Pearldiver07]

The AOW course is not intended to be an "ADVANCED open water" course, but an "advanced OPEN WATER" course. A significant difference. It is merely intended to expand the student's knowledge and experience beyond that of the original OW class under supervision, nothing more. I believe that this is a significant portion of the problem. Many students walk out of the class believing that the extra training makes up for a lack of experience.

I am a firm believer that training provides a foundation for experience to build upon, nothing more.

Again, I believe the name of the AOW course leads to confusion. I have always been a proponent of OW I and OW II for the names, as this gives a more realistic connection between the two classes, and their purpose.

If an instructor doesn't make it clear that the additional exposure does not make the student a more capable diver without additional experience, then he's doing them a disservice. And if a student thinks that one supervised dive to around 90 feet makes them ready to dive broadly more advanced dives, then he/she is deceiving his/her self.

 

[Suian]

I did my AoW with my OW course - a full on 6 day course in total.
The "Advanced" part of the course was 3 dives each teaching me some sort of useful skill;
Bouyancy control, Navigation and Search & recovery.
These skills were all tested in the marina I dived in: You learn how to navigate using a compass only quite quicky when the vis is only 5m.

When I got my diving going after the course, I always asked to be buddy'd up with an experienced diver, or me and my buddy would be near another pair.

Doing my AOW course after 5 dives was fine for me, because I was very interested and given I had been learning SCUBA all week, this was just another day for me to hone my skills more.

When I started the Dive course.
The company that did teach me how to dive (Perth Diving Academy) made sure that all the students were fit to dive (and not just by the medical) by checking some basic fitness and confidence in the water - being able to swim 400m and treading water for 8min.
You don't need to be an athlete to dive, you also can't be a fat slob either.

Edit: I found the PADI OW and AoW water reading material to be quite good. 90% of the content is fairly easy to read and well structured. The pop quizzes and the short tests at the end of each section help keep the student focused on the more important facts and make it easier to revise later on.

 

[theduckguru]

Really, I'm not sure what people expect when the OW course is essentially two weekends. Even tennis lessons for that amount of time will only have you still spending more time chasing the ball around than enjoying a good volley of back and forth. Adding an AOW right afterwards is simply loading the student with skills and tasks they are not prepared to handle. As I've said to anyone who will listen, the basic OW diver, right after the course finishes, survives not because they are well-prepared and confident divers, but because nothing goes wrong.

So where's the blame to be laid? I'd suggest squarely on the shoulders of the students themselves. Let's face it, no one wants to take, or would take, a 13 week basic openwater course so they can do a dive or two on their up-coming honeymoon to Fiji. There is simply no time in the present course to adequately prepare someone, anyone, to scuba dive with a buddy of comparable experience without a diving professional as a guide. Now I know why divers on vacation get lead around like school kids on a field trip to the local museum.

Get all of the agencies to up the standards - start by lengthening the courses so that there is time to develop an adequate level of watermanship (swimming, treading water, etc.), time to use confidence-building exercises and perform basic skills enough times that it starts to become second-nature and the number of incidences will go down and the enjoyment up.

Unfortunately, this issue is here to stay, just look at driver's licences. No one fails, everyone gets to drive and then all of us good drivers moan and complain about how terrible the system is. I think the industry has simply responded to a very competitive marketplace and the losers are the consumers themselves.

Sorry, but this thread touched a nerve...

Lee
NAUI #7908

How do you think consumers would respond to a 3 month training course at $2000?