AOW vs. Specialties

Can someone tell me what the difference is between a basic AOW certification and the various specialties that fall under AOW (wreck diver, nitrox, rescue, etc.)? I've been looking at a few shops - some offer an AOW course for around $250. Others don't offer that, but offer about six or seven specialties. I guess my question is, is it smarter to get the specialties - will they alone allow me to do dives deeper than 60ft (I'm OW right now) or do I need them plus the basic AOW course? does this make sense?

At least within the PADI system, the AOW course is designed to give you an exposure to 5 different dive types (Navigation and Deep are required, and 3 elective dives are chosen from Altitude, AWARE-Fish ID, Boat, DPV, Drift, Dry Suit, Multilevel-Computer, Night, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Search and Recovery, Underwater Naturalist, Underwater Photography, Underwater Videography, and Wreck). Depending on the facility, you may or may not have much of a say in which of the elective dives will be conducted.

If you're relatively new to diving, taking AOW to broaden your range of diving experiences might be a good thing to do. Usually, the specialty courses go into more detail than what's covered in that dive's portion of the AOW course.

If you decide to continue on and complete the specialty courses corresponding to the dives from your AOW course, the dive from AOW may be counted toward one of the dives required by the specialty course.

And just to clarify something from your post, again, at least within PADI, Nitrox is not part of AOW, but a specialty only, and Rescue is not a specialty but a certification level (which has AOW as a prerequisite).

Hope that helps.

What is PADI calling their AOW these days? Adventures in Diving? Adventure Diving? Adventure Dollar-IN?

Find a reputable dive store with an advanced open water class where you have classroom time, where you talk about advanced navigation, maybe also search and recovery, some night diving, some diving to 100 ft, and maybe a basic EANx thrown in as one advanced class. Two or three weekends would be worthwhile.

Dont put in more than $200 for all that. And dont get short changed.

Then you will be ready for basic rescue.

aujax once bubbled...
Can someone tell me what the difference is between a basic AOW certification and the various specialties that fall under AOW (wreck diver, nitrox, rescue, etc.)?

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AOW gives you a _taste_ of the different specialties. It's generally one dive for each specialty. Where the actual speciality is multiple dives and gives you a lot more in depth experience.

will they alone allow me to do dives deeper than 60ft (I'm OW right now) or do I need them plus the basic AOW course? does this make sense?

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It all depends on who isn't allowing you to go below 60'. A lot of charter boats will require AOW. I've not seen any that require a 'deep' specialty.

But the question is what are _you_ looking for? Are you looking for the certification you need to participate with other divers that may help you work up to bigger and better dives through mentoring, or are you in need of the controlled atmosphere of a class to get experience? The experience is critical. If you don't have any mentors to help you, you're better off getting your experience with an instructor before striking off on your own.

BTW: The only card I carry is my AOW card, and I've never been denied.

Actually, Adventure Diver is PADI's intermediate level between OW and AOW. It consists of any 3 dives from the pool of AOW dive types (do 2 more after that and if Deep and Nav are included, you've then got AOW). I'm not aquainted with many divers who have gotten this certification--most just go for the Advanced course. The package that contains the book (or CD) with the information and knowledge reviews for all of the dive types and is therefore appropriate for both of these courses is called Adventures In Diving.

And yes, classroom time should be a part of these courses.

at least within PADI, Nitrox is not part of AOW, but a specialty only

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True, but Enriched Air (Nitrox) is the only Specialty you can do while doing another dive. For example, if a diver was doing his Navigation dive, he could be doing while diving with Enriched air.

where you talk about advanced navigation, maybe also search and recovery, some night diving, some diving to 100 ft, and maybe a basic EANx thrown in as one advanced class.

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Guess what...all covered in Adventures in Diving (AOW). Or the diver can take various Specialties and wind up with Specialties and AOW.

BTW, there are something like 24 Specialties that are available now through PADI. Other than the mandatory Nav and Deep dives, it all depends on what your Instructor and you decide.

SubMariner once bubbled...
True, but Enriched Air (Nitrox) is the only Specialty you can do while doing another dive. For example, if a diver was doing his Navigation dive, he could be doing while diving with Enriched air.

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Agreed, SM, I just wanted to clarify since in his original post he included Nitrox in a list of "specialties that fall under AOW." And in your example, he'd still have to take the Nitrox specialty course to dive AOW (or any other dives) with Nitrox.

SSI require 4 specialities and 24 logged dives for AOW. I thought the standard of the SSI specialities was awfully low and learned little from them, most was common sense.

Each required two dives, but you could actually do multiple courses at a time, ie: fall off a boat and drop past 60' twice breathing Nitrox at night and you completed the necessary dives for Deep, Boat, Nitrox and Night. That along with the basic coursework hardly qualified anyone as an Advanced diver in my view, but there you go. Actually completing 24 dives was far more beneficial to me, than the actually specialities.

There does appear to be some more useful courses out there though. I'm just about to do the SSI Stress & Rescue course and from the course work it initially looks much better and way more useful. I'll also be doing the DAN O2 First Aid and ReactRight First Aid & CPR courses along side the Stress & Rescue, all of which offer some real practical value in my view.

The speciality courses all seem to try and sell other speciality courses and it just seems to be a marketing tactic to generate more money for the LDS with a little education thrown in.

As someone already mentioned, I think you really need to know what you want to get more qualfied at and more educated in, and then pick the training that fits your needs, rather than just collecting cards for the sake of it. Although AOW is a natural progression from OW, albeit not a big leap in my view, but still worth doing if it fits into your plan.

I would suggest doing the AOW. If you are a fairly new diver, it will introduce you into a few most common diving environments (e.g. night, deep, boat) as well improve basic skills such as navigation. It will also be proof that you are not a complete newbie to any charter boat captains.

Among the common specialties, the only ones that I think are worth doing is Nitrox and Drysuit. The other specialties(deep, boat, night, drift, etc.) are good for gaining some experience under the watchful eye of an instructor, but if you are comfortable enough and have other more experienced divers to dive with, it's not really necessary, and some would even say it's a waste of money.

The price for AOW at my LDS is $195. This includes a two-tank boat dive which normally costs $80, so the real cost would be about $115.

to counter what you said Paulwlee, but up here I find that if you're not previously AOW certified, than the advanced course is more beneficial than a drysuit course. The reason being is that our advanced course (when drysuit option is chosen) is completely done in the drysuit. Thus, when you're done, you have completed 5 drysuit dives. On the other hand, the specialty course is only 2 dives (the second one being a joke anyways... but thats another story). So you can see that your choice would depend on your location and what type of future diving.

As mentioned by Paul... a drysuit specialty is highly beneficial if you already have completed AOW and am now looking to get into drysuit diving.