AOW right after OWD

[uncfnp]

Competency is measured against the activity undertaken. For instance, you can be a competent OW diver, but an incompetent wreck diver. Given that 'diving within the limits of your training and experience' is a core principle in Safe Diving Practices, this makes perfect sense.

Most experienced divers will agree that the most prudent method of progression is to gain competency at your current level before advancing to new levels.



If only more people did focus on the skills gained on OW - and took the time to ingrain and refine them. Most don't - and it shows.

There's a famous quote:

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times". - Bruce Lee

Applying this principle to diving makes good sense. It's where the 'card collectors' and 'zero-to-heros' go wrong.

The foundations of competent diving are reliable and precise open-water skills. Plain and simple.

That's one reason why I don't criticize the AOW course for not introducing a plethora of new skills. It's an ideal opportunity to apply open-water skills in different contexts, with the benefit of safe supervision and instructor feedback/critique for directed performance improvement.

Ok, ok I agree. OW did give me the skills I needed to become a Competent Quarry Diver.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Exactly! Advanced open water is basic diving skills not advanced. My examples were advanced dive skills

Not in industry-standard parlance ... your examples were what's generally recognized as technical dive skills, since they all involved overhead diving ...

if you need to hire a professional or DM to make your dives (not to enhance the dive experience) then you need more instruction...like maybe AOW.

If you need to hire a professional or DM to make your dives, then you were not properly qualified to receive your OW certification, and AOW is not the appropriate way to correct that problem. The purpose of AOW is to expand your scope of experience and skills, not remediate what you were supposed to have received in OW.

AOW does not ... and was never intended to ... make you more prepared for making dives without a DM or other professional. Its purpose is (supposedly) to teach you additional skills needed for specific environments, such as deep dives or limited vis dives ... where additional planning, equipment, and skills may be needed that were not covered in OW. It was never intended to be a "make-up class" for deficiencies in what you were supposed to have learned in OW ... which, according to standards, should have prepared you for diving without supervision in conditions similar to those in which you were trained.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dfx]

Ok, ok I agree. OW did give me the skills I needed to become a Competent Quarry Diver.

So what's the difference between quarry diving and ocean diving? Boat exits and entries? Dealing with surf? Dives deeper than 30'? Something else? All this should have been covered in the OWD course. You may not have had a chance to properly practice those skills, but then that's all you had to do afterwards: Practice those skills. And yes, you could have done that on your own, without instructor, without supervision. (assuming the course did actually teach you everything that it should have, anyway...)

In contrary, what if you had taken your AOW back at home at the same dive shop? You still wouldn't have had any ocean dives. So then what, you'd call yourself an advanced quarry diver and still wouldn't want to go in the ocean? And what would be the remedy to that then, taking up a wreck diving course while on vacation?

But maybe it's one of those PADI things and I don't understand because I don't have the PADI perspective...

 

[Tigerman]

OW DOES, according to the books, cover differences between ocean and quarry diving, basics on currents and so forth..
Who says AOW woulda been just like OW because you do it with the same shop/instructor? Sure as hell wasnt the case for me. Theres something called transportation that can be used..

 

[uncfnp]

Not in industry-standard parlance ... your examples were what's generally recognized as technical dive skills, since they all involved overhead diving ...

Again, its semantics. If you want to call someone with a bright and shiney new AOW card with a total of 20 dives an advanced diver, by all means, do so. I choose to use that term for divers that dive beyond the basics, such as technical divers, solo divers beyond 60 feet, divers using advanced gas planning...

If you need to hire a professional or DM to make your dives, then you were not properly qualified to receive your OW certification, and AOW is not the appropriate way to correct that problem. The purpose of AOW is to expand your scope of experience and skills, not remediate what you were supposed to have received in OW.

Thats sort of the point that I was trying to make...or that they are planning a dive beyond OW, like maybe to 61 feet.

AOW does not ... and was never intended to ... make you more prepared for making dives without a DM or other professional. Its purpose is (supposedly) to teach you additional skills needed for specific environments, such as deep dives or limited vis dives ... where additional planning, equipment, and skills may be needed that were not covered in OW. It was never intended to be a "make-up class" for deficiencies in what you were supposed to have learned in OW ... which, according to standards, should have prepared you for diving without supervision in conditions similar to those in which you were trained.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Specific environments that I propose most divers see sooner rather than later. Instead of a diver developing bad habits when encountering these new environments on the own which are common in the world of diving, why not have them learn the correct way with an instructor. I was diving beyond the OW limits by my 10th ocean dive.

So what's the difference between quarry diving and ocean diving? Boat exits and entries? Dealing with surf? Dives deeper than 30'? Something else? All this should have been covered in the OWD course. You may not have had a chance to properly practice those skills, but then that's all you had to do afterwards: Practice those skills. And yes, you could have done that on your own, without instructor, without supervision. (assuming the course did actually teach you everything that it should have, anyway...)

The differences is twofold, one the same difference between reading anything in a textbook and the reality of the event and two, a concept called task loading...

In contrary, what if you had taken your AOW back at home at the same dive shop? You still wouldn't have had any ocean dives. So then what, you'd call yourself an advanced quarry diver and still wouldn't want to go in the ocean? And what would be the remedy to that then, taking up a wreck diving course while on vacation?


But maybe it's one of those PADI things and I don't understand because I don't have the PADI perspective...

Thats the point, I would not take it at home because it would not have given me the experiences that I needed to be better in the diving environment that I knew I would be in.

Just to clarify, as I understand it, the question is about going from OW to AOW with no or limited dives between. I have no problem with this since I see AOW as an extension of OW. I feel every diver needs the skills and environments covered in AOW to be a competent basic diver.

Also to clarify, I did not go directly from OW to AOW.

 

[dfx]

Thats the point, I would not take it at home because it would not have given me the experiences that I needed to be better in the diving environment that I knew I would be in.

In other words, you didn't really care about what AOW had to teach you, but rather wanted supervised OWD ocean dives. Which you would also have had if you had taken your OWD while on vacation in the first place, and never had taken AOW.

Maybe there should be an "ocean diver" specialty...

Just to clarify, as I understand it, the question is about going from OW to AOW with no or limited dives between. I have no problem with this since I see AOW as an extension of OW. I feel every diver needs the skills and environments covered in AOW to be a competent basic diver.

This is contradicting what you've just said above. In your case, it wasn't about AOW at all. In your case, it was about making supervised ocean dives, to get more comfortable in that particular environment. This has nothing to do with AOW. OW divers should be fully prepared for making ocean dives coming straight out of the course, it's pretty much the whole point of the course. They might not have had the real experience yet and it might be intimidating at first, but that's just that, experience. There's nothing "advanced" about it.

But it looks like this isn't true for a lot of people, which was one of my suspicions in the OP.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Maybe under some systems that provide abbreviated training. There are OW classes and courses that do in fact provide everything the diver needs, including rescue skills, to do fresh oe saltwater diving without ever taking another class if the diver so chooses. Including doing dives up to 100 feetin depth. Now they should work up to these over time and are advised to do so. And should they choose to go that route they have all the tools. The only reason they would need an AOW card is to satisfy some operators that are used to having untrained and unqualified people on board. Most of whom do in fact have an AOW card that taught them little if anything about the "advanced" dives they are now allowed access to.

 

[dfx]

Maybe there should be an "ocean diver" specialty...

Come to think of it, they do have a "boat diver" specialty... Maybe the PADI OWD really is more lacking than I had imagined...

 

[uncfnp]

In other words, you didn't really care about what AOW had to teach you, but rather wanted supervised OWD ocean dives. Which you would also have had if you had taken your OWD while on vacation in the first place, and never had taken AOW.

Maybe there should be an "ocean diver" specialty...


This is contradicting what you've just said above. In your case, it wasn't about AOW at all. In your case, it was about making supervised ocean dives, to get more comfortable in that particular environment. This has nothing to do with AOW. OW divers should be fully prepared for making ocean dives coming straight out of the course, it's pretty much the whole point of the course. They might not have had the real experience yet and it might be intimidating at first, but that's just that, experience. There's nothing "advanced" about it.

But it looks like this isn't true for a lot of people, which was one of my suspicions in the OP.

I just don't know what to say to this... I did not go from OW straight to AOW. I find it interesting that apparently because I argue that it is ok to do so and that AOW is still basic skills, you assume that's what I did. Read my posts. I did ocean dives on my own but decided that I wanted more instruction in the actual environment that I was already diving in. Where is the problem with this. As Bob said, it's to improve your diving in specific conditions, these are the conditions I wanted to IMPROVE on through instruction, not just floundering (pun intended) on my own or hiring a DM to hold my hand through the dive, or reading about it in a text book. That I can do on my own.

And I have no idea what "contradiction" you are referring to.

And I am beginning to think that instead of being interesting in a dialogue, you are just trolling...

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Specific environments that I propose most divers see sooner rather than later. Instead of a diver developing bad habits when encountering these new environments on the own which are common in the world of diving, why not have them learn the correct way with an instructor. I was diving beyond the OW limits by my 10th ocean dive.

I agree with this in concept, however if someone is not comfortable enough with their basic skills to dive unsupervised, then going into a course that purports to build on those skills to teach you how to handle a different environment isn't really going to help you ... all it's likely to accomplish is to make the development of the basic skills more difficult, and increase the likelihood of picking up some bad habits as a way to compensate for an inadequate platform upon which to build additional skills.

A better approach would be to hire a DM to take you diving in OW conditions so you can practice what you've already been introduced to, and save the addition of new environments ... along with the additional skills, equipment, and task-loading of that new environment ... until you're more prepared to take on something new.

What I offer people in this situation is a four-dive skills workshop where we can work on those basics ... buoyancy control, ascents/descents, trim and propulsion ... in a controlled setting. Once those are developed to the point that the student isn't struggling with them, then they will have the mental and physical bandwidth to take on the additional skills and task loading of an AOW class.

Also to clarify, I did not go directly from OW to AOW.

Then your experiences are not relevent to the topic of the discussion ... which was going directly from OW to AOW.

FWIW - everyone learns at their own pace. I've had the (rare) student who would be able to go to AOW directly after OW and get some value from the class ... but that's far more the exception than the rule. Some divers can be ready after only a handful of dives ... some take a lot longer than that. It depends on the divers in-water comfort, natural aptitude adapting to the underwater environment, ability to "think" about what they're doing and why, and several other factors that differentiate the individual learning curve.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)