What is exact outcome of AOW courses?
- Thread starter pelagic_one
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bradlw
Contributor
yes
well, only sort-of...
I understand that holding that AOW card is a prereq... for some courses (probably most/all?)
...ok, it is what it is...
I'm not saying, necessarily, a diver should be able to climb out of the water after their final OW checkout dive and jump straight into a Deco deep class
but
for example, SDI lists two (2) prereq's
- Minimum age 18, 10 with parental consent
- SDI Open Water Scuba Diver or equivalent, SDI Junior Open Water Scuba Diver or equivalent*
so THAT alone could be one of teh prerequisites.
boiling it down, looking at TDI's prereq's for their deco diver class
1. Minimum age 18.
2. Minimum certification of SDI Advanced Adventure Diver, Advanced Diver, or equivalent.
3. Provide proof of 25 logged open water dives.
so what, really does AOW add to a diver's qualifications to ready them for the course that 25 logged dives doesn't give them...
regardless
Basically.... whether you like it or not. Agree or not. See the sillyness in it or not...
none of that changes the fact that AOW is teh key to a lot of doors
so you'd might as well drink the koolaid, pay the money, take the silly little introductory min-classes in deep, boat, nav, and mermaid diving...and get the card
I had the same thought when I went through SSI's version way back in the day. I'm still struggling to see the point of it (well the point from the diver's perspective anyway. I see it from the school's perspective)
I tend to think that @halocline got it right in post #25. It's basically part 2 of what really should be one course.
lizardland
Contributor
I kind of agree with the sentiment. Looking at it from an agency's POV though, OW has an 18m limit as an independent diver and AOW is 30m if I remember right. Whether or not AOW's 30m limit after such a questionable bit of training is justified is really the crux of it.
Yep. It is just something you need to eat as it is such a widespread requirement across the world. I also think nitrox is similar. Basic nitrox use shouldn't really be a course, it's someone sitting down with you for an hour or two. But if you want to buy gas then it's a hoop you need to jump through. I don't really see why I need to do a lot of things just to be able to do my daily life but the reality is you need to just eat the turd sandwich, pay the money, nod politely and go home with the card. The alternative is complain about it, refuse to play along, sit out in the cold for a month or two then eventually relent and eat the turd sandwich which is now in a worse state than it was when you had the chance to have it freshly made.
Agreed. Just do it back to back and get it over with.
Argh.
How many times do we have to go through this? The OW certification limit for all WRSTC agencies including PADI and SSI is 40m. The 18m limit only applies to OW training.
AOW has no bearing on certification depth "from an agency's POV". It doesn't even have a WRSTC standard.
It is true that some dive operators will put depth limits on dives they lead based on whether the diver has AOW, but that is their choice or possibly a requirement from their insurance agency. It's not a certification requirement. If they tell you otherwise, they are ignorant or lying.
lizardland
Contributor
I live in a country where (rightly) no-one ever gets asked for a certification for anything so stupidly I had to base my post on PADI's actual website instead of reading 5 pages of bollocks.
In an article on certification restrictions:
And in the OW FAQs:
That aside, it doesn't really change that AOW is fairly worthless as a pre-requisite to learning to do deco dives. It's fairly worthless altogether.
Attachments
You are cherry-picking the available info. Yes, immediately post-OW certification PADI says you are trained to 60 ft. The "rest of the story" is that you may go deeper with additional training and experience....no additional certification is needed. What AOW does is proves you've had some additional training and experience, so "allows" you to go to 100 ft. But your recreational certification to 130 ft has not changed.
Also one can find other ways this is stated. For example, in the PADI Blog PADI Certification Rules and Requirements: Your FAQs Answered you find the following; notice the word "should" not "must" regarding diving deeper than your training depth.
How deep can you dive with a PADI certification?
If you’ve just earned your first PADI certification (Open Water Diver), you’re trained to dive to a maximum depth of 18 meters/60 feet, or to the depths that you reached during your training dives, if shallower. To dive deeper, you should take the Advanced Open Water Diver and/or the Deep Diver Specialty courses. If you want to exceed the recreational limit of 40 meters/130 feet, there are PADI certifications for that too: the PADI TecRec courses.
There is one caveat to all of the above. If a local law says you can’t dive below 30 meters/100 feet, such as in the Maldives, that’s the rule every diver must follow. Local regulations supersede certifications. Similarly, if a dive boat says you can’t dive below a certain depth, it’s important to respect their rules.
PADI is playing semantic games, They are referring to the limits of your training, not any limitations of your certification.
I'm going to repost something I wrote on similar threads in 2021 and 2023. Nothing has changed since then with the standards.
"PADI is a member of the WRSTC and must follow its standards.
It's interesting that the WRSTC has almost scrubbed the 40m certification limit from their site. Note there is no depth limit given in the Open Water diver standard.
The limit can only be found in two places. The first is in the WRSTC regional member application form. This is the form for certifying agencies who wish to join their regional council, not individual divers. The form states that members must be in the recreational diver certification business, which they define as:
An association, firm, corporation or other entity shall be deemed to be engaged primarily in the recreational diver certification business if more than sixty percent (60%) of its gross revenues are attributable to: the training and certifying of divers using compressed (atmospheric) air for no-decompression diving up to 130 feet/40 meters, the processing of recreational diver certification cards, membership dues from diving instructors and/or stores, the sale of recreational diver training and recreational diver instructor training materials, and fees for the training of recreational diving instructors.
Note that this limit only applies to compressed air. Which brings us to the second place the limit appears. The standard for Enriched Air Nitrox Diver states "5.2.2 All dives prior to enriched air certification shall be conducted at depths between 15 and 130 feet (5 to 40 metres)."
In other words training dives for a Nitrox class may go down to 40m. What about after certification? Enriched Air Nitrox - WRSTC states "At its August 2006 meeting, the RSTC approved a standard for Enriched Air Nitrox diver. This standard is a recreational entry level nitrox diver standard for depths shallower than 130 feet/40 metres."
Note that AOW is not a prerequisite for Nitrox. It can't be because there is no AOW standard. The only prerequisites for a Nitrox Diver course is that the diver be at least 15 years old, be OW certified, and have four (4) open water dives. The 4 dives can include the dives made during OW certification. So according to this standard an instructor could bring an OW diver to 40m on his or her very first dive as a certified diver as part of a Nitrox course. And once certified, the standard specifically allows dives to 40m.
Finally, the course doesn't actually require any dives at all. So an a diver with 0 logged dives after OW certification can obtain Nitrox certification, which we have already seen includes depths up to 40m.
Ok, so you don't want to go with all the legal mumbo jumbo about standards? Try PADI's blog post How Deep Can You Scuba Dive? [retrieved from archive.org as it's been scrubbed from the current site presumably because it contradicts the false impression they are trying to make elsewhere]
Many new divers are (understandably) confused about how deep you’re ‘allowed’ to dive as an Open Water Diver vs. an Advanced Open Water Diver. As a clever instructor once said, “at what depth will the scuba police pull you over?”
The maximum depth for recreational diving is 40 metres/130 feet .
There is, however, an important caveat: you should always dive within the limits of your training and experience. Open Water Divers* are trained to dive to a maximum depth of 18 metres/60 feet.
Can Open Water Divers dive deeper than 18 metres/60 feet? Frankly, yes. There are no scuba police out there to stop you (although some dive operations set depth limits and may have policies to deter divers from going beyond those limits)...."
oldschool45
Registered
Here’s my 2psi on the matter and I’m not a dive charter operator so my opinion means squat. I am one of those people who was freediving long before they got into Scuba so I was pretty competent at OW. I got my AOW just as an excuse to do more diving and at the time you needed AOW to take Nitrox.
My wife just started diving last year. I pushed her to get her AOW+Nitrox mainly because a lot of Boats and Liveaboards require it and AOW was the path of least resistance. I will say that I was not really comfortable with her as a dive buddy until she completed her AOW with under 30 dives total. Now I enjoy our diving instead of just being her chaperone underwater.
I can see why places prefer or require AOW as a minimum to dive and exceptional instructors aside I can see why AOW is considered the second part of the OW course. Can you get to that level of competence without AOW, of course but taken closely after OW it really speeds up the learning curve!
If we are diving shallow in the Keys or shore diving Broward or Palm Beach County you could still be wet from your OW cert and I wouldn’t be concerned. If we are diving; drift, deeper than 50fsw, playing around wrecks, catching bugs or lionfish unless I know you have been diving a long time I’m more comfortable knowing you have at least been exposed to those conditions than just encountering them for the first time.
My wife just started diving last year. I pushed her to get her AOW+Nitrox mainly because a lot of Boats and Liveaboards require it and AOW was the path of least resistance. I will say that I was not really comfortable with her as a dive buddy until she completed her AOW with under 30 dives total. Now I enjoy our diving instead of just being her chaperone underwater.
I can see why places prefer or require AOW as a minimum to dive and exceptional instructors aside I can see why AOW is considered the second part of the OW course. Can you get to that level of competence without AOW, of course but taken closely after OW it really speeds up the learning curve!
If we are diving shallow in the Keys or shore diving Broward or Palm Beach County you could still be wet from your OW cert and I wouldn’t be concerned. If we are diving; drift, deeper than 50fsw, playing around wrecks, catching bugs or lionfish unless I know you have been diving a long time I’m more comfortable knowing you have at least been exposed to those conditions than just encountering them for the first time.
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