watermonkey once bubbled...
ACUC rocks =-) like most of the other agencies, if you had a good instructor you are all set, go diving!
I think that agencies do make a difference, and that both ACUC and PADI have real differences. I also doubt that I'll be taking many more courses from either.
I initially certified with the YMCA--a wonderfully rigorous course, but in another age!-- in 1968. Then, because I'd had little chance to dive, again through a fairly rigorous course with ACUC, as the Association of Canadian Underwater Councils in 1981. In 2002, because two decades had elapsed and I jpoined my daughter (12) and my wife in the ACUC, now the American-Canadian Underwater Certification Agencies) OW course through Saskatoon's Triton Diving Club.
The fees were very reasonable because Ariel was a junior and I was re-certifying, and the amount of instruction per dollar was very generous. However, while most of the course was solid, there were some real gaps and blunders.
We both benefitted and suffered from team teaching. One instructor so badly mis-explained dive tables that that whole section had to be re-taught. Another gave interesting, but meandering presentations of the marine environment and its potential joys and hazards. Another generally taught well but absolutely rigidly.
The pool training was impressive in inculcating basic skills. Exercises in swimming skills, learning snorkelling skills, donning and doffing equipment, swimming blind, etc were impressively thorough, but sometimes almost obsessive. On the one hand, great patience was shown in helping my wife (a concert pianist) overcome ear problems and anxieties. On the other, there was one crazy night of the whole class, including my wife, who has back problems, and I, who had had surgery a few months before, repeatedly climb out of the pool in full equipment and do entry after entry from a diving board. (Of course, we could probably have refused, but did- *just* manage). And, unfortunately, real work on correct weighting and really thorough review of buoyancy control were almost lost in that shuffle.
We did the OW portion in Saskatchewan's frigid Lac au Claire in June 2002. It was pretty rigorous, and sometimes ridiculous. For example, 12 year old Ariel was task-loade with a controlled ascent along a line (one hand "walking" up the line) while buddy-breathing with a shared regulator (other hand transferring the reg back and forth, and checking the rate of ascent the rental instrument console (third hand)???, all in murky, freezing water.
That September, I headed north after a gruelling week at work, arriving close to midnight at the frigid Whiteswan lake, to try the ACUC Advanced OW. The next morning was such a nightmare: sleeplessness, an ill-fitting rental wetsuit, insecure weight belt, hypothermia and struggles with a just-bought-from-Ebay BC that, while I later recovered enough to succed at all other skills, (navigation, search and recovery, night dive) I agreed not to attempt the deep dive.
In December, we went to Cuba, for some fantastic diving off the Isla de la Juventud and Playa Giron, during which we all went well below 100 feet with no problem. This summer Ariel and I both got used drysuits, and after a couple of local lake sessions with a wonderfully helpful local PADI instructor the family went diving in BC' (Sechelt Inlet, Egmont, Quadra Island with only minor problems on coldwater ocean dives to 100 feet or so.
Recently, Ariel, now 14, and I completed the PADI Advanced course. We both paid well for the course and text and while we appreciated the preparatory pool and a classroom session, we couldn't help but notice how laid back, and undemanding both were, and how "green" the other participants seemed.
The subsequent two days of dive briefings and diving reinforced this impression. In addition top the six or seven Adavance OW trainees, there were also a dozern or so PADI examinees completing their PADI OW course on the same boat. We shared the impression that both groups generally seemed less inculcated with basic diving skills than our ACUC "classmates" had been.
I had to note for example both of our buddies failed to help with such awkward items as drysuit hoses, or even real inspection of our equipment, and seemed surprised when we helped them. And these were supposedly "advanced" divers.
On the other hand, the pace was much more patient, and the instructors were generally more relaxed and easygoing, and much quicker to step in and help, than what we had been used to in ACUC.
ACUC seems to benefit from a--sometimes too--strong training ethic, and to suffer from a weak infrastructure and lack of effective control and standardization. PADI seems to have too much of both, and to be too commercially focussed on routine processing people through an almost endless series of courses which increasingly break down the comprehensive set of skills needed for safe diving.
Ariel and I may encourage my wife to also take the Advanced course, because training, even repeat training, is always helpful, but mainly for the widely recogized piece of photo ID certification it produces. We may even keep her company by doing the Rescue Diver course with PADI at the same time.
However, we will likely be looking for other agencies to acquire further courses, especially in such risky areas as technical diving.
erich keser
saskatoon, canada