PADI "Looking Good" Certification

[Diving Dubai]

Actually I disagree with the boat specialty being trivial. It may well be as taught by some instructors, but if you drill down there is an optional section with gives a comprehensive overview of small boats and outboards etc, which who be a useful insight to new boat owners.

The issue as always is money and time with the base courses. How much time are people willing to give up on vacation to learn to Scuba dive, and how much are they prepared to pay for a course? I have sympathy with the commercial organisations.

I only enter BSAC after being PADI qualified. The BSAC OW course is quite comprehensive. On top of the 5 OW dives there are a further 6 or 8 specialty dives (in PADI parlance) experience diver in BSAC speak, which give the students exposure to different situations and dive types. Good as it is, the course if charged at commercial rates would never be a success (needing 10 days to complete)

Everyone is guilty of forgetting a good amount of theory for their OW course. Pretty much everyone learns enough to pass the exam and nothing more. If we are interested in progressing we generally need the information refreshed.

My one disagreement with the commercials, it that these extra cards are sold as a qualification, when they're just a taster. My Drysuit course was 2 dives and a pool session. enough to acquaint myself with the basics, but it needed further divers (10 in my case) to be comfortable) - I could list any other number of examples.

That said there are a good proportion of people who dive just on vacation and want these experience dives to try something new, and that's fine as long as they are marketed as an experience rather than a qualification of competency.

 

[RainPilot]

I agree, there is a lot of material in the OW book. More than is actually covered in the in-water training.

What I was objecting to was the statement that "everything" is covered in OW and "nothing" can be gained by any further training. The poster gave trivial examples (like boat), I gave non-trivial examples (like S&R) and disagreed with his use of Night as a example. Maybe some untrained night divers understand the additional difficulty of buoyancy without good visual clues, or realize the light is for signaling as well as seeing, or know how to read their gauges in the dark, etc, but most do not.

Im a Night Instructor and I still find my pucker factor higher during night dives. In one sense, the mechanics are the same as a day dive but in another, very real way the likelihood of a "daytime" emergency happening at night are MUCH higher. Lost buddy, screwed nav, buoyancy issues, OOG due to inattention (task loading) etc etc etc.

I would never recommend an OW diver to do their first night dive without an instructor there who is focused on overwatch. I dont know that it needs to be a speciality but as an elective on an AOW? For me the perfect place for it.

 

[dmaziuk]

Im a Night Instructor and I still find my pucker factor higher during night dives.

You may be having perception bias: people who have no problem night-diving on their own are not enrolling in your class.

I took a quick look at PADI book, it does not seem to cover night at all, boat basics are there but no rhib, kayak, etc. are not. I'm sure it all depends on Location, Location, Location: El Aguila in Roatan is about the safest 110' you can do, Bari Reef on Bonaire is probably the best first night dive, etc.

 

[RainPilot]

You may be having perception bias: people who have no problem night-diving on their own are not enrolling in your class.

I took a quick look at PADI book, it does not seem to cover night at all, boat basics are there but no rhib, kayak, etc. are not. I'm sure it all depends on Location, Location, Location: El Aguila in Roatan is about the safest 110' you can do, Bari Reef on Bonaire is probably the best first night dive, etc.

Im referring to my own pucker factor. I have around 20 night dives, not a huge amount, and I still don't approach them with anything resembling complacency. Some of it may be a hangover from learning to dive in the home of the Great White but I cant imagine doing my first night dives without some form of training beforehand.

 

[bobfmdc]

Wow! This thread continues. After starting it back in early August, I thought it had run its course since I received no more alerts about postings after a few days. I get the notifications on my Yahoo email account (no, they were not in my spam folder), and I expect Yahoo was the cause of that problem. If the buy-out happens, I am sure Verizon will fix that.....NOT!

 

[bobfmdc]

OK, since this thread is still active, I will note that I have gotten a number of great ideas, from this thread and also my friends, for my soon-to-be proposal for a PADI "Looking Good in Scuba" specialty course. One of these is an email ad a dive buddy received this week from Akona for their self draining dive booties. The ad (as you can see if I manage to copy it here) is clearly built around the idea that you need to drain the noxious liquids you put into wet suits out when you get out of the water.

Question to readers: Is this really necessary, or even desirable?

Corollary question: Will you feel better about yourself, and/or will others feel better about you if you wear these things?




Team AKONA Members
DON'T TAKE OFF YOUR BOOTS IN BETWEEN DIVES!
We all do it, right? Some even joke about it. "There are two types of people, those that pee in their suits and those that lie about it." But have you ever stopped to consider what is in your boot when you take them off in between dives?



During the month of October the AKONA Seco Boots are 30% off.
Here is an opportunity to get a new pair of self draining neoprene booties at a fantastic price.
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Save 30% off a pair of AKONA Seco Boots when you purchase them during the month of October. Your feet and hands will thank you.

 

[bobfmdc]

This post is disingenuous and naive. The open-water cert MAY be all you need to do a (for example) boat dive, but it is NOT all you need to do a night dive, or a safe lift-bag/search-and-recovery dive, or a deep dive (like 130 ft). I'm guessing you have never taken a good specialty class from a good instructor. So maybe it is not good to generalize and offer bad advice.

My wife just took the NAUI Advanced Open Water cert in Turks & Caicos. The NAUI course contained written instruction on underwater searches and lift bag operation, and one of the open water dives was devoted to the applications. She has never done anything more than lifting sea shells (albeit over 400 dives) and did OK. No need for a specialty course, although some types of searching (e.g., black water) require much more than the AOW course. Having done a lot of that, I am not sure whether the specialty courses would cover all you need.

But then, "Looking Good" in black water is an oxymoron, isn't it?

 

[StayWet]

"What I was objecting to was the statement that "everything" is covered in OW and "nothing" can be gained by any further training."

Tursiops, you have taken my words and changed them around to invalidate my remarks, who's naive now?

 

[george_austin]

View attachment 380003 View attachment 380004 Here are a couple of Japan only specialty courses. The how to build Gunpa robots underwater course and an elective adjunct of the PADI looking good underwater specialty certification...the how to put thigh high stockings on underwater course.
The Japanese are lightyears ahead of us westerners.
If you want to see more of this Japanese weirdness just google "underwater knee-high girls". It's all safe for work too.

That is soooooooo hot

 

[stuartv]

Not sure if this is already buried somewhere in the thread, but according to this:

PADI Distinctive Specialty Courses

There is a PADI Distinctive Specialty called "Underwater Model".