What do you think about Advanced Open Water Diver Certification?

[spectrum]

Setting the divers aside I think it also calls into question the dive instructors faith in his student to mutually plan a dive with the OP. Is the student not quipped with the knowledge to understand his or her limits?

Also it's still not clear what the status of the student is. It may be semantics but a student is taking a course. A diver who is between classes is perhaps a client or customer. The notion of the instructor vetting buddies is a little weird.

I suspect there is more to this story.

Pete

 

[ScubaSteve1962]

It's probably been said already but I think more than any other course I've taken, the value (or not) of AOW depends on the instructor, the student, and how well their goals align and the student's own experience.

I'm just finishing up GUE Fundamentals right now, and I did AOW in January of this year. AOW was valuable for me, in terms of showing me what PADI didn't teach me and wasn't going to teach me. AOW taught me how much I wanted to take Fundies, and my expectations and hopes for Fundies were right on the money.

Exactly what did AOW teach you that PADI OW was supposed to teach you, I'm just curious?

 

[Bob DBF]

IMO Rescue should be a required class for every diver, and you can't take rescue without AOW. Also, there are some worthwhile specialties in AOW such as: peak performance bouyancy, nitrox, digital photographer (if you're interested in taking pictures), Emergency O2 provider, equipment specialist, to name a few. Of course whether or not the courses are really valuable depends on the instructor.

Even PADI allows Rescue without AOW. You need the Navigation Adventure Dive or the Navigation specialty to take Rescue. If you were told otherwise, your Instructor was less than fothcoming.

NAUI, SSI, and i would guess others would as well.


Bob
----------------------------
I may be old, but i'm not dead yet.

 

[tursiops]

IMO Rescue should be a required class for every diver, and you can't take rescue without AOW. Also, there are some worthwhile specialties in AOW such as: peak performance bouyancy, nitrox, digital photographer (if you're interested in taking pictures), Emergency O2 provider, equipment specialist, to name a few. Of course whether or not the courses are really valuable depends on the instructor.

Not really. AOW requires dives, not specialties, so O2 Provider and Equipment Specialist are not part of AOW, and Nitrox may not be if it is the non-diving version.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

TRM,

An advanced class might fill in some holes or it might not. It really is hit or miss much more so than OW. Of course you do not need an advanced card to dive in the Los Angeles area. As you already have surmised no one will be waiting for you on the beach prior to shore dives to check credentials. On boat dives it is the exception if cards are checked at all. A state of affairs which must seem appalling to those at the nanny ops. Not that you should not use caution. The depth limits are pretty reasonable until you get your buoyancy, buddy skills and situational awareness sorted out. But then experience would probably help those more than AOW so it should not be a gate. Tropical dive destinations are a bit different. There an advanced card may be a lazy way to evaluate experience even though the experience can be thin to non-existent. But the ops need to do some way to sort the many divers that come their way.

The instructor may have been more concerned about you over taxing his student than offering a criticism of your diving. By the way what shore dives did you do that were considered advanced?

 

[xdjio]

Exactly what did AOW teach you that PADI OW was supposed to teach you, I'm just curious?

Perhaps poor phrasing on my part. AOW was useful because of - primarily, for me - one big thing.

AOW has a "deep" experience dive. We did that, but I was left with so many questions upon reflection, that PADI's curriculum didn't satisfactorily (for me) answer. We turned the dive with about 1800 PSI, for example. Okay, that's nice, great, but HOW did we get that number? Coming up with an exhaustive way of planning gas is nowhere in the AOW manual, and wasn't covered in any great depth by my instructor. I did a 37m dive with my instructor on a 12L (100ft^3) tank - at the time, I had no way to independently judge for myself if that is adequate or not.

So AOW was illustrative as an example of finding out what I didn't know - and how much I didn't know. Thus it was useful in prodding me to go looking for the kind of education I was really after. YMMV, but for me that has been GUE Fudamentals.

 

[ScubaSteve1962]

Perhaps poor phrasing on my part. AOW was useful because of - primarily, for me - one big thing.

AOW has a "deep" experience dive. We did that, but I was left with so many questions upon reflection, that PADI's curriculum didn't satisfactorily (for me) answer. We turned the dive with about 1800 PSI, for example. Okay, that's nice, great, but HOW did we get that number? Coming up with an exhaustive way of planning gas is nowhere in the AOW manual, and wasn't covered in any great depth by my instructor. I did a 37m dive with my instructor on a 12L (100ft^3) tank - at the time, I had no way to independently judge for myself if that is adequate or not.

So AOW was illustrative as an example of finding out what I didn't know - and how much I didn't know. Thus it was useful in prodding me to go looking for the kind of education I was really after. YMMV, but for me that has been GUE Fudamentals.

Okay I understand, but the AOW dives were just and introduction, and goes further in depth in the certifications.

 

[spectrum]

Okay I understand, but the AOW dives were just and introduction, and goes further in depth in the certifications.

Perhaps, but how many go back to do full blown specialties unless they head down a technical tract? The masses gain the AOW smorgasbord of experieinces masqurading as demonstration of competence and head off to push the limits.

Pete

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

Perhaps, but how many go back to do full blown specialties unless they head down a technical tract? The masses gain the AOW smorgasbord of experieinces masqurading as demonstration of competence and head off to push the limits.

Pete

Selling AOW where a smorgasbord of experiences masquerades as a demonstration of competence is exactly the problem.

Well I can't believe I am going to say this since I have certainly had my issues with the quality of GUE instruction, but they do do a good job of teaching gas management with seems to be what xdjio is after.

 

[xdjio]

Selling AOW where a smorgasbord of experiences masquerades as a demonstration of competence is exactly the problem.

Well I can't believe I am going to say this since I have certainly had my issues with the quality of GUE instruction, but they do do a good job of teaching gas management with seems to be what xdjio is after.

I can appreciate GUE isn't for everyone - and gas management is exactly what turned me onto them. I've gotten a lot of other stuff out of them too -- but most importantly, to each his own. I'm sorry to hear you had some less-than-satisfactory experiences with them though.

100% agreed though, the issue with AOW is that it carries with it some implied standard of competence or skillfullness, that course itself cannot really provide -- not reliably, anyway. I'm not sure what I really learned in AOW that I didn't know from my own reading or research, or that I couldn't have picked up through experience with a skilled buddy. But I could tell you any number of things I directly learned though my Fundies class that I would have had a lot more trouble picking up on my own.