PADI AOW & Nitrox

Greetings SBer's!

Just a quick question that may just be an oversight. When I was on the PADI website, I was looking through their specialities listed for AOW. I didn't see Nitrox listed as a specialty. Was that an oversight or isn't that available as a specialty under AOW?

I think it would be useful to piggy back Nitrox and deep dive together, as some have suggested here on the board. One LDS owner told me he was upset because many people wanted to take nitrox as part of the AOW rather than underwater photography and night diving. He discouraged fairly new divers from certifying in nitrox.

Thanks in advance!

Jack

I don't think Nitrox could easily be done as a part of AOW without changing the course a lot. Unless it's changed a lot AOW is simply a series of guided different types of dives which don't require much extra learning and certainly don't teach the full speciality - it's more of an 'experience' speciality thing. It's hard to see how that could be applied to Nitrox which basically needs you to understand and learn all the theory.

As for using on the deep dive that would actually defeat the purpose of the dive as explained to me by my instructor. One of the things that they want to do is show what narcosis is or at least demonstrate that it is having an effect. That's why they make you do a simple problem at depth. In my case it was working out a repetitive dive using the tables which was timed by the instructor. Some people would get the answer wrong - others take a lot longer to do it than at the surface. Either way it shows that you don't operate the same under the effects of narcosis (even if you don't think you are narked). That's a valuable lesson.

Within the past year PADI has increased options for combining nitrox with other courses. I'd double check to be certain, but I believe that it can count as one of the optional topics for AOW. You would need the seperate nitrox text as that material is not in the AOW (Adventures in Diving) manual.

most of the nitrox work is done out of the water, so what you could do is combine nitrox and AOW, so do night and deep and whatever specialiteis you want, and ask your instructor to allow you to do nitrox on 2 of the dives, which will get you certified in everything. No need to do nitrox instead of one of the specialities..

jbliesath:

Greetings SBer's!

Just a quick question that may just be an oversight. When I was on the PADI website, I was looking through their specialities listed for AOW. I didn't see Nitrox listed as a specialty. Was that an oversight or isn't that available as a specialty under AOW?

I think it would be useful to piggy back Nitrox and deep dive together, as some have suggested here on the board. One LDS owner told me he was upset because many people wanted to take nitrox as part of the AOW rather than underwater photography and night diving. He discouraged fairly new divers from certifying in nitrox.

Thanks in advance!

Jack

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Nitrox is a 'technical' qualification and is quite involved with lots of theory and 4(?) course specific dives to qualify. It would just take too much time as part of AOW is my guess.

You wouldnt teach Nitrox with 'deep' as this is kind of a contradiction. Nitrox limits depth to a greater extent than air. Nitrox gives you longer NDT limits at mid range depths (apart from its uses as accelerated deco) and its benefits reduce rapidly with depth, so you wouldnt see the true benefits or get the feel of 'how it works' in my opinion.

Hope that helps?

Si

Simon L:

Nitrox is a 'technical' qualification and is quite involved with lots of theory and 4(?) course specific dives to qualify. It would just take too much time as part of AOW is my guess.


Si

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amm..nope...nitrox requires 2 dives, and the coursework can be done in one night with a good instructor, it is regularily done with aow.

I did nitrox and AOW together. Of course, it was PADI.... The course work for a nitrox was a self study and exam. That's it!

Kim:

As for using on the deep dive that would actually defeat the purpose of the dive as explained to me by my instructor. One of the things that they want to do is show what narcosis is or at least demonstrate that it is having an effect. That's why they make you do a simple problem at depth. In my case it was working out a repetitive dive using the tables which was timed by the instructor. Some people would get the answer wrong - others take a lot longer to do it than at the surface. Either way it shows that you don't operate the same under the effects of narcosis (even if you don't think you are narked). That's a valuable lesson.

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This is such a common protocol, but yet I can't think of anything more frustrating that the dive industry promotes then this.

Said another way, if I were going to teach you to drive a car, would I ask you to get drunk first and then drive?

In my view, the proper approach is to teach avoidance [ie; proper gas choices], not subject the student to unecessary risk. If, as you suggest, the deep diving portion of the class is designed to teach you how to dive safely at depth, then why in the world is the only skill routinely introduced at depth is the completion of a math problem? Wouldn't a better approach be to teach skills that may actually happen, not to test for something that should be avoided?

Anyway, this is just my observation of another instance where the dive industry has it backwards..

Regards

mossym:

amm..nope...nitrox requires 2 dives, and the coursework can be done in one night with a good instructor, it is regularily done with aow.

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Fair enough. I did mine with TDI and I forgot how many dives it included so I stand corrected!

MHK:

If, as you suggest, the deep diving portion of the class is designed to teach you how to dive safely at depth, then why in the world is the only skill routinely introduced at depth is the completion of a math problem? Wouldn't a better approach be to teach skills that may actually happen, not to test for something that should be avoided?

Regards

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My understanding was that this was done to alert us of the effects of depth on our 'neurology'? When I did my deep dive I went through all those puzzles and was quite surprised by the effect, and my first reaction was 'how can I avoid this?' to which I was told by my instructor 'you could look into Nitrox etc etc etc'. Nevertheless, I'm glad i went through those elements under controlled conditions with an instructor.

Further to making us aware of these effects during the course, I agree that the tests should be expanded tho to some drills or other experience...

Any thoughts?