AOW, Jr vs Regular...

[yle]

I'm in the same situation with my son. He completed his OW this summer. I had intended to give him a couple years of experience before moving on to the AOW. I also would have preferred him completing his AOW in Canada where he will be doing most of his diving. This winter we will be heading to Roatan and he really wants to dive with the sharks. That dive is 65'. We didn't want to take a chance the dive shop would enforce the PADI depth 'guideline' so I enrolled him in the AOW in Roatan.

Based on my experience on diving around the Caribbean, I would guess there is about a 10% chance that they will limit your son to a 60' depth. As I mentioned in an earlier post, last summer our family did a dive trip to several islands. My 13 yr old, OW certified niece was along and not a single dive shop cared about any depth limit for her. She did around half a dozen dives between 70 and 100 feet.

Worth noting that just about anywhere you dive in the Caribbean, you are diving with sharks... regardless of the depth.

 

[ljpm]

Based on my experience on diving around the Caribbean, I would guess there is about a 10% chance that they will limit your son to a 60' depth. As I mentioned in an earlier post, last summer our family did a dive trip to several islands. My 13 yr old, OW certified niece was along and not a single dive shop cared about any depth limit for her. She did around half a dozen dives between 70 and 100 feet.

Worth noting that just about anywhere you dive in the Caribbean, you are diving with sharks... regardless of the depth.

Ya, but its that 10% that will catch you, especially when you have to pay in advance. Plus, there have been a number of post on SB recently about charters and shops not allowing anyone below 60' without having an AOW. Nice way for shops to increase AOW course numbers as the OW course numbers fall.

 

[Bob DBF]

The weird thing about the "Junior AOW" is that the required deep dive must be done between 60 and 70 feet... but when she turns 15 she's somehow automatically qualified to dive to 100 feet. This is a loophole in the PADI system (as even the OW course states that new OW divers are trained only to the deepest depth they reached in the course.) If solid training is what you want for your daughter, wait until she's 15 and make sure the instructor makes the deep dive to 100 feet.

If the deep dive is to 100', or even 70'. From PADI " The Deep Adventure Dive of the course involves diving deeper, between 18-30 metres / 60-100 feet." The loophole covers everyone. Pays to find out about the dive profile before booking the course to insure the deep dive is actually going to 100'



Bob

 

[yle]

Ya, but its that 10% that will catch you, especially when you have to pay in advance. Plus, there have been a number of post on SB recently about charters and shops not allowing anyone below 60' without having an AOW. Nice way for shops to increase AOW course numbers as the OW course numbers fall.

Absolutely true, on all counts. What it comes down to is you play by their rules if you want to dive with them; and the more you play, the better you learn how the rules can differ from one place to the next.