Which PADI AOW specialties
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soggybadger
Contributor
My Aow was an anti climax. Deep was 26m ( colour fade was pointed out) on a wreck. Wreck was a Repeat of the deep dive with the addition of sketch map of the wreck. I failed the basic navigation (but passed) and can't remember what the other two adventure dives were. I don't think it matters which five a person chooses as none of the adventure dives make a diver advanced. At most it's slightly more knowledgeable novice. I'm not saying that an individual shouldn't do Aow just that the dives are relatively meaningless and that content should not be of great concerns. Buoyancy etc should have been covered in ow. I've got my flame proof knickers on and am awaiting the incoming barrage of disagreement from those with infinitely more wisdom and experience than i.
Why would it be a gross violation of standards?
I'm genuinely asking this. As long as they had done the 5 adventure dives and has done the knowledge reviews what would be the issue?
To require a specific set of complete courses (not just the adventure dives) to be completed in order for AOW certification to be earned.
Now that I have the instructor guide for the DSMB specialty, it is one of the adventure dives that is in my AOW program (the others being PPB, nav, night, and deep). I structure dives to build upon skills conducted by previous dives as much as possible. And I do throw in one extra thing, as I also teach my OW students and AOW candidates to determine their SAC rate prior to starting AOW (I give them an Excel spreadsheet that does all the calculations for them. They just have to enter in time, depth, cylinder size, rated tank pressure, and change in cylinder pressure). It is not a violation of PADI standards to have them determine how much air they will consume during the deep dive (they are provided a profile conducted by me with time/depth) how much air they will consume. This isn't a violation as I am not having them do anything extra in the water (I've already checked with PADI on this). And my students love it.
Right I get it. I think technically you could just not offer AOW. But rather a 6 course package. But I get what you are saying.
I quite like your approach actually. You seem to care about producing good divers and working on being a better instructor. If you were local to me I'd meet up for a dive with you.
I do care. I care a lot.
But I have to teach AOW, as AOW is a requirement for the deep specialty. I've contacted PADI about how if I give a student credit for their deep adventure dive, what can I do with them for an extra training dive, as technically they will have paid for 4 training dives. I'm waiting for a response, but it was to be discussed in one of their meetings last week.
I teach AOW with the mindset that my students will take GUE fundies and with a little bit of work and polish, they will earn a rec pass. If I am successful at that, then I feel I'm doing a good job. You've read the adventure dives that I require for AOW. You haven't seen me teach, but you'd have to take my word for how strict I am (or talk to a student who hasn't passed the PPB adventure dive after 10 attempts - but he's still working on it, and he doesn't give up, so I won't either). But the last adventure dive, the DSMB, that is where I have the strictest interpretation of the performance standards, as that is where everything comes together. There have been people scoffing at that specialty, but it has a lot of good elements in it for the cold waters of the Puget Sound when it comes to ascents: managing air in the dry suit and BCD, slow controlled ascents, and maintaining a tight line, are very important for boat diving out here. Allowing a student to pass if they allow the line to go slack is just asking for an entanglement hazard. And if a boat comes by..... That's going to be a bad day for them, and a bad day for me in court when they get run over. Hence, they have to be able to execute those skills multiple times, as PADI's definition of mastery includes that skills can be done repeatedly.
I'm not the best instructor out there. I have set some role models as goals that I'll probably never reach (Davis for example). But I'll do my best to get there. Being a joke or mediocre just doesn't interest me. And there is too much of that.
Eventually I want to create my own skills videos for OW and AOW, subject myself to online criticism, as even the worst jackass may offer in his insults something that I can use to teach more effectively. That's a win for me.
Cr.padlo
Contributor
i disagree on PPB, most of that comes with experience and finetuning what works for you-I would recommend Night. not only does it teach you how to handle low light situations, but it also teaches you hot to be more aware of your surroundings and buddies
OP
If I understand you ,, you want to know what specialties to take for your AOW. If that is correct it doesnt matter. They are exposure dives not certification courses. I think you have a good list. definitely deep that gets you to 100 ft. night so you know the boogy man doesn't get you and to experience loss of orientation and visual navigation. wreck so you can see the dangers of and spark a lot of discussion of do's and donts around wrecks. navigation so you know how much you suck at working a compass and how much work you need. Likewise PPB is good and necessary for coral diving and ascents with out lines to hold on to. I look at these dives as dives to show you just how much you don't know before you write a check you can cash. These are the dives that if things don't go right you have an experienced instructor with you to get you through the unexpected surprises. Longer term areas are the PPB and nitrox that should be done as a separate course to allow mastery of skills. once you get your PPB down then take the shoot a DSMB test and rate your PPB skills. I may be a bit demeaning in this but photography is probably not that useful unless you have a real passion in the art of taking pics. If you are using a gopro I will guess you are not there. Even the cheap cameras can take some great pics. I don't know much about such stuff other than the best camera cant take a good pic if you don't have the water skills to set it up properly.
If I understand you ,, you want to know what specialties to take for your AOW. If that is correct it doesnt matter. They are exposure dives not certification courses. I think you have a good list. definitely deep that gets you to 100 ft. night so you know the boogy man doesn't get you and to experience loss of orientation and visual navigation. wreck so you can see the dangers of and spark a lot of discussion of do's and donts around wrecks. navigation so you know how much you suck at working a compass and how much work you need. Likewise PPB is good and necessary for coral diving and ascents with out lines to hold on to. I look at these dives as dives to show you just how much you don't know before you write a check you can cash. These are the dives that if things don't go right you have an experienced instructor with you to get you through the unexpected surprises. Longer term areas are the PPB and nitrox that should be done as a separate course to allow mastery of skills. once you get your PPB down then take the shoot a DSMB test and rate your PPB skills. I may be a bit demeaning in this but photography is probably not that useful unless you have a real passion in the art of taking pics. If you are using a gopro I will guess you are not there. Even the cheap cameras can take some great pics. I don't know much about such stuff other than the best camera cant take a good pic if you don't have the water skills to set it up properly.
The problem with answering a question like this is that the quality of the dives is very much dependent upon the abilities of the instructor. If you have an instructor who sucks at PPB but excels at fish-id then you will get more out of the dive if you do fish-id.
Clearly your own preference is important so if you have a specific wish then look for an instructor who is passionate about that particular thing.
Just taking myself as an example, I'm particularly good at teaching navigation and buoyancy control and my personal diving often involves deep/wreck so I'm very good at those as well. I have about 2000 dives in a drysuit as well so combined with deep/wreck (or S&R)/dry/night/ppb and navigation I am in a position to throw together a good specialty and/or advanced course centered around any of those. My personal preference when teaching advanced is to teach it based around at least one specialty. I normally recommend navigation for that in our local context.
On the other hand I have literally zero experience with altitude diving. I can identify some fish but mostly I just enjoy watching them. I have used a camera under water but asking me to teach UW photography would be a massive waste of your time and although I dive a lot with nitrox and have advanced certifications for nitrox and trimix diving I don't even hold a cert to teach nitrox in the PADI system because students don't dive for their nitrox cert anymore and imo it's a waste of my time and theirs to teach this specialty if I can't do anything to help them improve their skill as a diver. For the same reason I never teach any of the other dry courses. I like some of the topics but I have colleagues who are better at it an more interested in the topics than I am.
See what I'm getting at there? For some things you would think I"m a great instructor and for other things I would suck. For that reason it's very important to talk to your instructor about THEIR passions as well as your interests to make sure you have a match. If you can't get a match with just one instructor then ask the shop to set you up with a "team teaching" arrangement so you're getting a passionate instructor for each topic you want to learn.
R..
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