What training is "required"?

[KeithG]

The first thing you have to do is define the word "required," and to do that, you have to determine who is doing the requiring.

Agreed. And so far basic padi OW has worked fine for me.

We also do our research and only utilize dive ops that are willing to treat us as adults. We do NOT dive in the USA. There are lots of other places in the world that are happy to let us do our own thing.

Part of the mandatory Bonaire orientation a few days ago was the assertation that we are all adults, all certified to dive no decompression limits (as a minimum) and are free to do whatever we want. No depth limits, no time limits, no scuba police. Please dive responsibly and enjoy!

 

[Tracy]

Much of it has already been said. Let me just add my experience with the specialties. It's probably no surprise, but it all came down to the match between my needs and what the instructor was able to deliver in the framework of the course. Dry suit was very helpful for me. I got OW certified in Costa Rica, but then wanted to go on to AOW and diving in the Great Lakes. A competent drysuit instructor certainly helps me getting the hang of it quickly, and also demystified the process of buying one quite a bit. The sidemount course, on the other hand, was a complete waste. I was struggling with getting the tanks trimmed out on my own after the course, and when I started with cavern, my instructor basically had me start all over again on sidemount, as much of what I had learned was not appropriate for overhead environments.

The he one I'm still trying to figure out is the deep specialty. I haven't taken it, and yet I'm quite comfortable in the 100-130 ft. range, especially when I dive my sidemount rig with all the redundancy that it affords. But when I was looking for Great Lakes dive boats last summer, I came across one that explicitly required the deep specialty to dive anything deeper than 100ft. Is this perhaps becoming more common with all the liability fears out there?

Which great lakes boat has that requirement? None that I am aware of and I own one of them?

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[Father]

The PADI depths from OW to Deep cert. are recommendations, not any sort of requirement by PADI.

UNless you're looking to go into TecRec... I think they have pre-requisites for those courses. Or you can just go through a different agency.

Part of the mandatory Bonaire orientation a few days ago was the assertation that we are all adults, all certified to dive no decompression limits (as a minimum) and are free to do whatever we want. No depth limits, no time limits, no scuba police. Please dive responsibly and enjoy!

Does that mean Bonaire doesn't think an adult can responsibly go exceed their bottom time and go into deco for a few minutes?

 

[TMHeimer]

UNless you're looking to go into TecRec... I think they have pre-requisites for those courses. Or you can just go through a different agency.


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Well yeah, PADI has prerequisites for just about every basic course (and for some of the Specialties)-OW,AOW,EFR,Rescue,on to the pro levels. So, to get AOW you must have OW, whether you stick with PADI or go to another agency (not as easy to cross-over once you're a dive pro). But I'm still not sure what you're getting at regarding "requirements". Of course any agency will have prerequisites when you move up their ladder. But none of that stuff is required by anybody if you just park the car and do whatever kind of dive you want by yourself or with a buddy friend.

 

[Father]

But I'm still not sure what you're getting at regarding "requirements".

Whether there's some sort of expectation or requirement to have a certification in order to do certain types of diving... mainly deep diver.

 

[Nuribromanski]

Whether there's some sort of expectation or requirement to have a certification in order to do certain types of diving... mainly deep diver.

depend on whose boat ur diving off is all

 

[Diver0001]

... snip...

I see a legitimate need for rebreather and cavern and wreck if you're penetrating to the point of not being able to see daylight or your point of entry/exit.

Deep diver, not so much. This one I find particularly frustrating. Why doesn't AOW certify you to the max rec limit? So PADI can milk another hundred or so dollars out of you?
Are there any dive resorts that actually ask if you've done this before allowing you to dive to 130'.
Are you going to get nailed by the PADI police if your logs show you've gone deeper than 130' without having the card?
Did the guy that broke the Guinness Book of World records have the "max depth of any human" specialty course?

Your question seems to be whether or not specialties are required and whether or not they are worth the money.

With respect to diving instruction, the answer is more nuanced than "milking another hundred dollars" out of the client. I'm sure there are shops that do that, but the system is not specifically set up to do that, although it does facilitate it.

"Adventure dives" are there because there is a market for divers who want to try something (maybe once) or are considering buying a bit of gear and are interested in getting better informed. If you don't want or need this, then don't follow them. For some people it's fun. For others it's a waste of money. You're in control here, nobody is forcing you to take an adventure dive.

"Specialties" are there because there is a market for divers who want to try something more than once, perhaps because they are seriously considering buying a bit of gear and want to have some basic proficiency using it before they buy. An example of this is a drysuit. In my day, there was no drysuit course. My "instruction" consisted of the shop saying to me, "dive shallow until you have it under control". For some people such a specialty has value, for others, it does not. Again, your choice. A second reason people take specialties is to "fix" skills problems that they are having. In a perfect world this wouldn't happen but in the world we live in, some divers take specialties (like PPB, navigation or a number of others) in order to overcome specific issues they are having. Again, if this doesn't apply to you, then don't spend money on it. There are other motivations as well but I' won't list them here. The point of this is to show you that not everyone has the same needs or desires as you do so the system is made in order to cover the wide range of reasons why people might seek additional training. Your needs are not the only needs in the entire population of divers.

As for specialties that are "required". You might need an EANx cert to get Nitrox fills and frankly it would be unwise to dive with Nitrox without some basic training. For renting certain bits of gear the shop might want to see that you have some basic skill with it. After all they would like to have their gear back in one piece and preferably YOU back in one piece as well. This is just common sense.

As for the deep speciality, what you have to understand is that PADI is a world wide organisation. Where you live, the difference between diving to 30m and 40m might only be that you're a little more narced and you have a shorter NDL. Where *I* live a dive to 30m, especially for beginners can be very intimidating and very challenging. There's a huge difference diving to 30m if the water is warm and clear, your gear is light and you can look up and see the boat. In our context, you're gear is heavier, it's *pitch* black at 30m and the water temperatures are uncomfortably cold. The narc can worse, navigation is more complicated, the bottom is mud and even keeping together can be a challenge in and of itself.

In that context, diving to 40m with an inexperienced student would be down right stupid. Training our local divers to 30m is dangerous enough as it is and we definitely want our students to have some post cert experience in the 25-30m range before even considering taking them to 40m.

So once again, you're looking at your own situation and projecting your own diving and needs/desires as a person over the entire diving industry and suggesting that they must be trying to milk students' wallets because it's organized like that. That irritates me because whenever I hear someone saying this, it's invariably due to them seeing themselves as the model of the only scuba diver in the world for which the course should be designed.

R..

 

[SillyQuestions]

"Ohh diving nitrox is hard and not recommended without basic training"

No it isn't. Takes less than an hour for a mate to sit you down and show you how to:
Analyse gases
Work out equivalent air tables
Tell you not to exceed your MOD


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[boulderjohn]

If you dive a hardcore PADI resort I suppose they might use every opportunity they can to "require" you to have the cert/specialty for the dive you want to do.

Beyond your word and your dive logs how else can you prove that you have not only done that type of diving before but are also comfortable and proficient in it besides havin the C card? I have plenty of logged dives >100'. I personally don't see the difference between 100' and 130'.

Here you are inventing a problem that does not exist. For the diving you describe, a small minority of operators will require AOW or its equivalent, and the agency does not matter. I don't know of any resort anywhere requiring any other certification just to go deeper while within the standard recreational limit of 130 feet. Resorts are aligned with certain agencies for their instruction; for their diving, they don't care what agency is named on your card.

UNless you're looking to go into TecRec... I think they have pre-requisites for those courses. Or you can just go through a different agency.

All technical diving agencies have prerequisites for technical training.

---------- Post added December 23rd, 2015 at 10:22 AM ----------

For overhead (wrecks/"caverns") what I had in mind when I said "seeing daylight/exit" was more along the lines of swim-thrus and wrecks like the Kittiwake in Grand Cayman.

Overhead environments are problematic because agencies in general have contradictory statements regarding them. Once again, though, it comes down to the operator to define the requirements, because the agency has no authority to enforce any limits on your diving.

The current PADI OW course states emphatically state that OW divers should never enter any overhead environment without additional training. The "rule" is violated every day around the world by literally thousands of divers swimming under arches, entering small wrecks with obvious easy entrances and exits, and following DMs through short swim throughs. In contrast, some of the PADI technical material writes about how OW divers gradually develop their skills in such overhead environments, thus saying it is OK for them to do this. In even further contrast, PADI put its blessing on a specialty course I wrote called "Understanding Overhead Environments," a purely academic course that teaches about the increasing difficulties present in different overhead environments so that OW divers can determine which are appropriate to their level of training and experience and which absolutely demand further training. (If you want to take the course, let me know.)

As an example of how an operation can define the limits on overhead environments, take the case of Ginnie Springs in Florida. When you go to the front desk to pay your entry fee, you present your certification(s). If you present only an OW card, you get the appropriate wrist band and a warning about your limitations regarding the caverns and caves. For example, you will not be allowed to carry a light. If you present a cavern or basic/Intro card, you will get a different wrist band. I plan to be there in January, and I will show two cards, a cave diver card and a DPV for overheads card, and my wrist band will show that I can take my scooter into the cave.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Ginnie breaks things down quite a bit when it comes to wrist bands.

For example, if an intro to cave diver wants to dive doubles in Ginnie they need to show training in doubles at the intro level.

One nice thing however is that they incentivize training somewhat as the daily rate in Ginnie is lower for a full cave diver than it is for a basic/intro to cave diver.

As noted above, cave DPV certification is required if you want to bring a scooter.