What is Advanced Open Water Diver???

[raybo]

ibnygator once bubbled...
that some commercial dive boat operators will require you to show an AOW card for deeper dives. Either that or your log book that shows deep diving experience. That is the only reason I did AOW after 8 years of diving.

Not that I've had that much exposure, but I've never been asked for an AOW card. And haven't had the log book looked at either, and a fair amount of dives in the 70-90 ft range, couple pushing 100+.

I ended up with it as a function of a bunch of specialties. But, IMHO, the PADI-AOW is really an introduction to the available specialties.

Not much more than that.

 

[O-ring]

ibnygator once bubbled...
that some commercial dive boat operators will require you to show an AOW card for deeper dives. Either that or your log book that shows deep diving experience. That is the only reason I did AOW after 8 years of diving.

I did the same thing because the boats around here (VA Beach and NC) require an AOW card to take you to most of the wrecks..

 

[Spectre]

raybo once bubbled...
Not that I've had that much exposure, but I've never been asked for an AOW card. And haven't had the log book looked at either, and a fair amount of dives in the 70-90 ft range, couple pushing 100+.

I've had charters require an AOW card before. I've also had one boat [on Long Island] want my log-book, as he requires at least 5 dives in the 100+ range in cold water. The only other time my log book was checked was by my Cavern instructor.

 

[DiverBuoy]

Shameful. No classroom, no tests, no confined water, no education. It is a continuing open water experience program.

The advanced plus was just a longer version of a continuing dive experience program. AOW is marketed extensively as a for fun class (read: not advanced). Not that you shouldn't enjoy yourself diving. But neither AOW addresses the need for becoming an advanced diver, except where further experience is an essential component.

The mochery is the fact that any dive boat requires a diver to have this card for any type of diving, where a logbook with similiar dive experience would more than suffice. It gives OW divers with merely 5 additional dives of experience (AOW) some sort of false sense of security, that somehow they are "advanced" divers.

 

[Walter]

DB,

Hold still my heart, we are in agreement.

"The mochery is the fact that any dive boat requires a diver to have this card for any type of diving, where a logbook with similiar dive experience would more than suffice. It gives OW divers with merely 5 additional dives of experience (AOW) some sort of false sense of security, that somehow they are "advanced" divers."

OTOH, if you have a choice between "a continuing open water experience program." and an advanced class, with academics and twice as many dives............

 

[SARmedic]

It's a decent class to take if you want some more supervised diving.

It just exposes you to a few new environments with supervision and some explanation. Navigation and night are my favorite to teach. Night dives seem to be the class favorite all the time...

 

[mddolson]

SARmedic bubbled:"it just exposes you to a few new environments with supervision and some explanation."

Agreed, I enjoy running the Advanced courses, both NAUI and PADI, however "ADVANCED" is the wrong name.
NAUI used to call the course "Sport Diver" which is more appropriate. However they changed the name to Advanced to meet PADI's strong marketing.
NAUI's Advanced Diver was what's now called Master Scuba Diver (again to agree with PADI's nomeclature)

MikeD

 

[DiverBuoy]

Walter once bubbled...
DB,

Hold still my heart, we are in agreement.

At some point I definitely erred in saying we'd never see eye to eye. I repent in dust and ashes.

Honestly, this is my biggest pet peeve about PADI - anything after OW. Only a few of their continuing education programs really help continue your education. I really like the PADI OW program. Now I'd change my view about other courses if they would put the same quality effort into these like they did for OW. I am highly concerned as I've stated before - about the content, approach, and marketing of the advanced open water course.

 

[Lead_carrier]

O-ring once bubbled...

I did the same thing because the boats around here (VA Beach and NC) require an AOW card to take you to most of the wrecks..

Actually o-ring, I've had them ask which agency my AOW was with, THEN they decided whether or not I had to bring my log book to them. They told me that if someone was PADI AOW then they wanted the logbook because of the possibility of lack of experience.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I don't know why AOW should be required by a dive charter because it isn't even required by PADI. For any course that has AOW listed as a prereq the diver may be accepted by showing log documentation of experience in night, nav and deep with some cert beyon entry level. I don't remember if there is a requirement for the number of dives.

In fact, I have a student that is an experienced cave explorer with more technical diving experience than I have who decided he wants to be an instructor. He must take rescue and DM training but needless to say I am not requireing him to take AOW. It would be funny though to lead him on a night dive after he helped me through a restriction in a cave Sunday morning or to take him on a 100 ft deep dive after he has surveyed caves at 250. LOL

Oh heck maybe I'll make him do AOW just for fun. I'll even make him wear a snorkel.