Any skills in AOW

Hi, I have started reading my padi adventures book to prepare for my AOW. I recall from my OW book that skills covered in the OW & confined dives were listed quite clearly.

In this book its not clear which skills need to be acquired. Do you do the same skills in the AOW taster as in the specialty? Thx
B

The actual skills will depend on which dives you and/or your instructor choose to do. Some of the full specialty classes have more skills or give more depth to the skills, but it will ultimately depend on what you do. AOW is really designed to allow you to experience more types of diving: diving in different conditions or improving skills gained in OW.

Typically, with most agencies you will be required to do both a deep and navigation dive. I also like to throw in a low-visibility or night dive as part of my "Advanced Openwater" course. And if I do not know the student, I will start with an OW Skills review to make sure they are actually able to clear their mask, get neutrally buoyant, do both kinds of regulator recovery, and assist an out of air diver.

When I lead AOW, each dive has specific objectives and tasks, but not the kind of basic skills that you have in OW. Navigation, buoyancy and trim are emphasized by me on every dive. We also do more dive planning, and task loading. Our typical set of dives is Altitude dive, wreck dive, navigation dive, search and recovery dive, and deep dive. Among the tasks we engage in addition to navigation are towing a dive flag, deploying an smb from depth, and stringing a line and retrieving it ( but we do not penetrate on the wreck dive. ) Not all courses incorporate all these tasks, but my view is that aow is to extend the student beyond just focusing on diving to moving to the point of "doing tasks" while diving. It is a big step, and we work on buoyancy and trim becoming more or less automatic. Then you can do other things- take pictures, chart fish populations, observe wildlife without crashing the reef or disturbing the bottom, etc. Enjoy the class as moving from being able to dive to being able to do things while diving, and diving independently, doing and carrying our your own dive plan with your buddy.
DivemasterDennis

Some of the dives do have prescribed skills, at least in the PADI AOW. For example, the Deep dive has a slate where you look at colors and try to identify them at depth. The Nav dive has various exercises, including measuring kick cycles and swimming a square.

In the instructor's manual for AOW and specialties, there are a lot of things an instructor MAY do but is not required to do. How many of those things your instructor brings to the dives in your class depends on the instructor you have.

Not all AOW classes are alike. My friend, NWGratefulDiver, teaches an AOW class that kicks butt, and he's had people come from across the country to take it. My AOW was actually of very little value. It's worth doing your homework before signing up for the class.

ballastbelly:

Hi, I have started reading my padi adventures book to prepare for my AOW. I recall from my OW book that skills covered in the OW & confined dives were listed quite clearly.

In this book its not clear which skills need to be acquired. Do you do the same skills in the AOW taster as in the specialty? Thx
B

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Most of the answers seem to have missed your actual question! The answer is Yes, but the "taster" is only dive one (usually) of each specialty and all the skills of the specialty are not on dive one. So you do all the skills in the "taster" that you would do on dive one of the full specialty.

AOW doesn't introduce many, if any, new skills. It generally takes existing skills up a level and adds some experience.

For instance:

You learn compass navigation on OW. AOW takes that further with slightly more complex swim patterns (square rather than a simple out-and-back reciprocal).

You learn about color change at depth in OW theory. AOW shows that in real life...and you have a color slate to record the effect you see.

But these are not, arguably, anything 'new' for the OW diver.

Adventure Dives (dive #1 of any specialty) tend to be very non-demanding and introductory-only. However (as others have mentioned) a good instructor can add a lot to those dives - by supplementing the knowledge and/or training given.. and tailoring the learning experience and outcomes/goals to suit an individual diver's needs.

many that argue AOW is worthless. i disagree, it is an opportunity for new divers to gain some more experience under the supervision of an instructor. however, it is not a course that introduces many new skills unless you have an instructor that goes above and beyond the basic requirements.

ballastbelly:

I have started reading my padi adventures book to prepare for my AOW. . . . In this book its not clear which skills need to be acquired.

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You are right, the 'skills' are not as crisply outlined in the Adventures manual as in the OW book. But, in general, the information is there. At the end of each chapter, usually immediately before or at the bottom of the Knowledge Review, there is a 'Dive Overview' which outlines the Performance Requirements (aka skills) for each dive. For example, for the Underwater Navigation Adventure Dive, the overview includes 'Distance / Time Estimation Swim', 'Navigate a Straight Line Underwater using Natural Navigation, 'Navigate a Straight Line and Its reciprocal Underwater Using a Compass', and 'Navigate a Square Pattern Underwater using a compass'. These are the core 'skills' to be acquired during the dive. The descriptions of how they are to be performed are included in the preceding text. For the U/W Navigation example, there is a section on 'Distance Estimation', a section on 'Natural Navigation Underwater', etc.

ballastbelly:

Do you do the same skills in the AOW taster as in the specialty?

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Yes, because the 'taster' is actually one of / the first of the dives required for the particular specialty. The PADI ('wet') specialty diver courses generally require 2, 3 or 4 dives. The first dive in every specialty course is also the 'Adventure Dive' for that specialty. With certain exceptions, you can complete the specialty without taking AOW (or Adventure Diver), simply by completing the 2, 3, or 4 dives required for the specialty. But, if you take AOW, you will complete Dive 1 of 5 different specialties (U/W Navigation, Deep, and 3 others).

The related chapter of the adventures book (before the Knowledge Review) will list the required skills. They're a little more wordy as they're a bit more involved though.
AOW is designed really to gain more diving experience in a safe environment whilst learning a few non-core techniques so its not as obvious as the OW level. AOW (nav excepted really) is often just a normal guided dive with a few minutes of tasks on the dive, a bit more of a thorough briefing and some review afterwards.

I agree with the above, it can be a very good course but depends how much effort the instructor wants to put in. Some of the topics for dives i'd class as worthless (boat etc). Personally i like people to do search and recovery and then a few others as those do include and teach more skills as such.

It's only a worthless course if you've got a worthless instructor. Sadly, i can find a lot of those!