tdinindy:
What would essential skills would be learned elsewhere that PADI does not teach.
Rescue on scuba, Rescue on Snorkel, ditching weight belt when snorkeling. Those would be some of the main rescue differences. Aside from that, and additional academics that Naui has - there is not much difference at the Open water level.
Probably a larger difference comes in at the instructor level. I see that from your profile that you are working toward your MSDT. That basically means, you are collecting instructor specialty cards and when you have 5, and some required number of dives you can me a MSDT. I know, I did it years ago myself before the light went on. The question is, why do I have to pay PADI 40 or 50 bucks to teach night dives? Or Boat dives? What do I learn by cutting that check??
With Naui, after you are an instructor, you can teach any standard specialty as long as you have the required experience in it. You don't have to send them more money. That's the difference between a "for profit business" and a "non-profit educational agency". Cheaper insurance, due to our safety record, cheaper certification cost, cheaper books, etc. etc.
But even if the costs were all the same - the real reason some choose Naui is flexibility. Padi standards dictate that all the skills in this module be done before I can do any in that, and this skill must come before that, etc.
We feel that a guy who wrote standard while sitting at a desk in California, cannot effectively evaluate the student I have in my pool in Texas to determine what they need to be comfortable and enjoy their training. If I have a student that is having problems with a mask flood, no problem, lets go work on something else, come back to that tomorrow.
Last time I looked at Padi instructor slates, (don't know if they changed them in the last year), in confined water there were ascents in module 2, descents in module 3, and fin pivots in module 4. The purpose of fin pivots to "introduce students to the concepts of buoyancy".
My question would be, how did you teach proper ascents and descents if you haven't taught buoyancy yet. And if you did teach buoyancy, then why do this "fin pivot" exercise afterwards??
I have the freedom to structure the course based on my time, conditions, and student needs.
Now I've run into a lot of Padi instructors that say "Well I do that all the time, I'll switch up skills, or add some extra stuff on rescue." And I say great... you're teaching a Naui course... your students are better for it. If you want to give them a Naui card instead of a Padi card... you can save some money as well.
So the big difference is that Naui empowers their instructors to make more judgment calls on how to best conduct the class. If an instructor does not have good judgment, he should not teach a Naui program, and would not get through my Instructor course.
