What certifications would you say are a "must have"?

[Blackcrusader]

Peak Performance Buoyancy - gets you weighted properly and gives you pointers on maintaining neutral buoyancy. This gives you better control and better air consumption. Some people kinda come by this naturally.

You only need this course if you were not trained properly in your OW class. People who are taught about trim and proper weight distribution from OW don't need these courses. A dry suit diver certainly needs training so they don't end up feet up uncontrolled.

 

[Blackcrusader]

It obviously starts with OW.
After that do AOW so you can get on boats.

You can do boat dives in Hawaii and Asia with OW. AOW is not required but same dive ops may ask.
When my son took his honeymoon in Hawaii the dive op preferred divers with AOW. After they saw his dive computer with hundreds of dives on it they said yeah ok fair enough you have more experience than many AOW divers that have a cert and 20 dives.

 

[Centrals]

You can do boat dives in Hawaii and Asia with OW. AOW is not required but same dive ops may ask.
When my son took his honeymoon in Hawaii the dive op preferred divers with AOW. After they saw his dive computer with hundreds of dives on it they said yeah ok fair enough you have more experience than many AOW divers that have a cert and 20 dives.

LOL.
Computer does not lie but human does. Anyone can borrow a computer and claimed to be his/ her own.
I would rather trust someone with a detaild log book than the cards.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You can do boat dives in Hawaii and Asia with OW. AOW is not required but same dive ops may ask.
When my son took his honeymoon in Hawaii the dive op preferred divers with AOW. After they saw his dive computer with hundreds of dives on it they said yeah ok fair enough you have more experience than many AOW divers that have a cert and 20 dives.

Yeah I suppose you can.
But AOW just makes it easier and question/ vetting free. And it's more training and dives, so that's good.

 

[Blackcrusader]

Yeah I suppose you can.
But AOW just makes it easier and question/ vetting free. And it's more training and dives, so that's good.

Sure. I went diving at one place. The instructor told me I cannot go on a deep dive to 35m as I did not have a PADI deep Dive Cert. I told him not required. Then I asked the instructor to see the guides PAdi Deep dive cert or the intructors deep dive cert? They told me they were not required to have them lol which is true as OW doesn't need one either.

Finally got the instructor to admit to me in private he knows OW is certified to 40m but wants to sell courses. I said sure you sell courses I go on deep dives. Showed my dive log where 30% of my dives are deeper than 30m lol

 

[Centrals]

www.padi.com
PADI AOW is 30m max.
I know one dive operator in Subic Bay(Philippines) would not let any divers to dive any wreck deeper than 30m without either tec cert or PADI Deep Dive Specialty qualification.

I travel with IANTD Tec Nitrox card which means I am qualified to breath any mix up to 100% ie. pure O2 and max depth is 51m.

 

[Germie]

You only need this course if you were not trained properly in your OW class. People who are taught about trim and proper weight distribution from OW don't need these courses. A dry suit diver certainly needs training so they don't end up feet up uncontrolled.

training are things that can also be done without instructor. It is excersizing. I have learned myself drysuit diving, it is no rocketscience. First dive to 17.5m as it felt ok. Next dive was a night dive.
It is some physics and feeling or talent of the diver. But if you are unsure, yes, please do a course. But don't make it required for everybody. There are still autodidacts and it seems in diving no single form of autodidacticity is allowed, every diver must be taken by hand with every step they make.

As set before, the open water course is a 40m course, but you are trained to 18 or 20m, depending on the agency. The aow is in most cases 30m, but cmas 2* is 40m, and this is also the same iso/nen norm for advanced open water diver. With just open water you are allowed to progress on your own and 'slowly'.
But if the first dive after ow in the aow course goes to 30m, a lot of people will accept this. If the same ow diver does a 30m dive as 5th dive on his own, then people start to complaign.

But of course diving is a pyramid game, so money must be earned. This is one of the reasons why there are so many courses and why they tell you that you have to do the next course. Also why there is said that an aow course is required. It is also to make money.
Another thing is that a lot of adult people like to have certs. So split things up in several courses means more certs, so it looks like you have learned more. A lot of people are sensitive for it. And the dive agencies like this of course. Also most people only do a hobby for 3 to 5 years. This means in this time you must try to sell as much as possible to a customer, so courses, equipment, travels, etc.

But if you want to do all dives on oc that you can make you need:
-Nitrox open water diver (there is with some agencies the option to do nitrox and open water in 1 course)
-if not in 1 course, nitrox
-AOW, search for an agency that does this in 4 or 5 dives
-Deep diver specialty
-Advanced nitrox with decompression diving in 1 course (some agencies split this in 2 courses)
-Normoxic trimix
-Full trimix
And for cave:
-You can directly go to full cave in 12 dives. Then you do cavern/intro/full cave in 1 week and get 1 cert.

Courses like drysuit, fundies/intro to tech, sidemount, rescue, all are optional. Some agencies require courses, but then you are allowed to choose one that doesn't. Read as a customer the standards as some instructors or divecenters say things are required, but aren't according to agencystandards.
You can do for example a trimix course in drysuit and sidemount without having a tech sidemount and drysuitcert. But there are instructors who tell you that the sidemount is required. Then it is up to the customer to decide if this instructor is the way to go or that it is better to go to another instructor.

I prefer myself by doing a 'let us know each other dive'. Then I know if a diver is able to do the course or that more skills are required before starting.

In the 15 years I have done over 3000 dives, I have seen a lot of new courses being 'invented'. Sometimes it is just because others ask how you do such dives. An example is for example a bailout ccr course and sidemount ccr cave course. I don't have these certs, but I was already doing these dives a long time before there were courses for it. So I was one of the pioneers for this kind of diving. But I did not write a course for it. The best practises I have sort out myself. Now I can explain this also to others.
Sometimes you see that agencies add new courses to their curriculum because they miss divers that go to other agencies. If other agencies offer the option to dive sidemount or ccr, then you have to add it, otherwise you will loose money. I have also seen that there came recreational ccr courses, just because some divers want to use a ccr and never want to do a techcourse. But also because they want to do some dives on a ccr to try it and then a course ending with a cert is a nice way for them to spend some money and to get the proof they did it. I have also seen that dpv cave was added. It is no rocketscience to use a dpv in a cave, but a lot of people are missing brains or so, because there happened accidents because people went in a cave to far with a dpv and then came into problems. So for them a course is not a bad idea. But also after a course people will do stupid things, we are all human and human do sometimes stupid things, even the best instructors or most experienced divers.

 

[NothingClever]

@Germie

I’m a little disappointed you only provided eight chapters of thought in the “New Divers & Those Considering Diving” sub-forum. With that ninth chapter you held back on, you could have helped out new divers with insight into standard versus precise mixes in the hypoxic range.

 

[Germie]

I will add a 9th

But what I want to say is that on every level there are courses invented that are not required. And you don't know where a diver ends or want to go. I already knew during my open water course that technical diving would be my thing. And when I asked the same question about the way to go more than 15 years ago, I did not get an answer, only: get experience. So I had to sort everything out myself. Reading standards about how many dives are required for the next level (and that is in most cases very very low, too low), which courses, etc. So I found out that I never had too less dives to start a course, that I needed a drysuit and got my drysuitcert foc when buying a drysuit without seeing any instructor, that my nitroxcourse took 1.5 hour and costed 135 euro where nothing was told more than was written in the thin book you got, etc.

So the ts only need a few courses, which are mention before by me and others, and if the ts want to go further, also not all courses are needed. And remember, every beginner will get more experience and every experienced diver or instructor started as a beginner.