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You can mix or max specialties from all the major US agencies. I have done them with SSI, SDI, PADI.

If you do AOW your Deep is only one dive. If you do the Deep specialty you should get more training and do at least two deep dives.

You can do Deep without the AOW. Some agencies will let you count AOW as part of the specialty but I never did that. If I was going to take a specialty I wanted to get a much out of it as possible so I never counted any of AOW as part of any of the specialties I took later.

In my own case I did Deep later when I needed it as part of DM and long after I had been routinely doing dives in the 80-100 ft range. So I did not get much out of that course other than a needed card but that may be the exception. One of my dive buddies is my old instructor who is also a Tech instructor so I have had lots of advice and training outside of the class room and the courses we did together often covered much more than the minimum.
 
I would suggest you build a solid foundation to your dive skills first. The GUE fundies or the UTD Essentials is a great place to start.
 
I agree with Jim; Rescue should be taken before Advanced unless your OW provided you with a reasonable degree of personal/Buddy rescue skills. Many divers have come to me for advanced (more training) because after they were certified they didn't feel comfortable/competent to dive and felt they needed more training. This has occurred more with the passage of time as the training standards have been continually lowered by the greatest majority of training agencies.

If you've been properly trained, you shouldn't require more training unless you want to venture out of the envelope you're trained to dive in. There is lots of diving to be done and experience to be gained in the OW envelope. Assuming you're comfortable and competent, experience is the best teacher. The problem I see is people too often take "Advanced" courses to make up for the shortcomings of their OW course. What this sometimes does is put a novice diver into deeper water (hardly a good solution). There are of course exceptions to the rule.

If you're ready to increase your diving complexity, by all means take further training. Further and more advanced training isn't recommended until the student gains confidence and competence within their current diving envelope which they are certified for.
 
Thanks for all of the input! For you guys that are recommending Rescue first, what is the thought process? What are the big take homes you would want to see in a diver in your group?
My main interest right now is getting to some of the deeper objectives in the GBR, and I have heard great things about the SS Yongala. I was thinking that the Deep specialty would answer my specific goal right now. If I had my shagrins I would be taking rescue, Fundies, nitrox, wreck, deep, a DM course for good meaure, and the whole Cave curriculum from any agency that teaches. Alas, not enough hours or dollars in a day.
Those of you who recommended AOW, instead of the specialty, is there any of the five options you would highly recommend with deep, it seems some of them are gimmes? But seriously, Fundies is on the list, a lot of enthusiastic supporters here on the board.
 
Thanks for all of the input! For you guys that are recommending Rescue first, what is the thought process? What are the big take homes you would want to see in a diver in your group?
My main interest right now is getting to some of the deeper objectives in the GBR, and I have heard great things about the SS Yongala. I was thinking that the Deep specialty would answer my specific goal right now. If I had my shagrins I would be taking rescue, Fundies, nitrox, wreck, deep, a DM course for good meaure, and the whole Cave curriculum from any agency that teaches. Alas, not enough hours or dollars in a day.
Those of you who recommended AOW, instead of the specialty, is there any of the five options you would highly recommend with deep, it seems some of them are gimmes? But seriously, Fundies is on the list, a lot of enthusiastic supporters here on the board.

If you don't know how to rescue your buddy what kind of buddy are you? If your buddy doesn't know how to rescue you, why are you diving with that buddy? Dangerous Duo.

I never took rescue. We did have enough in my OW class that I've been able rescue two buddies, one from certain death.
 
Thanks for all of the input! For you guys that are recommending Rescue first, what is the thought process? What are the big take homes you would want to see in a diver in your group?
My main interest right now is getting to some of the deeper objectives in the GBR, and I have heard great things about the SS Yongala. I was thinking that the Deep specialty would answer my specific goal right now. If I had my shagrins I would be taking rescue, Fundies, nitrox, wreck, deep, a DM course for good meaure, and the whole Cave curriculum from any agency that teaches. Alas, not enough hours or dollars in a day.
Those of you who recommended AOW, instead of the specialty, is there any of the five options you would highly recommend with deep, it seems some of them are gimmes? But seriously, Fundies is on the list, a lot of enthusiastic supporters here on the board.
The primary benefit of taking Rescue first is that the Rescue class has, really, two objectives. The one that gets the most attention is the ability to assist a dive buddy in the event of an unforeseen incident that requires your assistance. The more important objective of the class, however, is what we call "self-rescue" ... the ability to observe and evaluate a building situation that may ultimately lead to a bad outcome, and therefore take steps to avoid it before it occurs. This is a skill that applies to pretty much all of your diving ... and the reason it should come after OW class is because during OW class you're focused primarily on the basic skills that get you underwater ... and the next logical step is to now take a class that's going to help you stimulate your thinking process in the application of those skills, as well as teach you some new skills that can help you get yourself or another diver out of a situation where things didn't go right.

Your reasons for wanting deep training are pretty normal ... a fascination with depth and the desire to go on "signature" dives that require the additional training. The AOW class won't really give you the necessary training to do that ... not even a more extensive class like the one I teach ... because it's really designed to give you exposure to those conditions, not thorough training for them. And there are necessary skills ... like gas management ... that are critical for deep diving that most AOW classes don't even touch. Some instructors will include this in their curriculum, but most agencies don't require it and therefore most instructors don't do it. A deep diving specialty would be more thorough, and would provide you with more tools for deep diving ... including (I hope) a more thorough understanding of not just the critical skills, but the equipment and mindset that you'd want to take with you on a deeper dive.

There's an article on my website on deep diving that might provide you some useful information ... my suggestion is to read the article and use it as a basis to seek an instructor who can teach you a good deep diver specialty class. Interview the instructor. Ask them how much emphasis they put on risk remediation ... gas management ... equipment and dive planning concerns. If the instructor seems like they understand why you're asking those questions, then chances are pretty good that you'll get a class worth taking. If they put you off, or come back with BS, then that's a clue that you'd just be going through the motions in order to come out the other end of the class with a card and not a whole lot of useful knowledge and skill set.

Fundies is a great class ... but you'll do most of the in-water part in 6-7 meters of water. It's more focused on building a solid skills platform, and on teaching you how to think about your approach to diving. I'd recommend it highly ... but that wouldn't meet your goal of getting onto these deeper dives you want to do, not in the short-term anyway.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
I have a PADI OW cert. with about 25 dives. I am looking at some dives here in Australia that are past my 18m depth and want to get some training in deep diving. I know I could take the PADI AOW but I was looking to see if I could bypass that and get specific, focused training in just deep diving.

I have been looking and I know that other agencies, SSI/SDI, have a different path to Advanced open water status. Could I as a PADI OW diver cross over and start taking specialty courses from these other companies? Has anyone else done this? What was your experience? Other thoughts? What do you say DIR crowd, should I go whole HOG and dive into a GUE fundamentals course?

I want to get a lot of good learning for my money, not just looking for a card with some letters. I appreciate your input.

DonPedro

If you are just interested in deep training then here is what you need:
PADI: OW --> Adventure Diver --> Deep specialty. Adventure diver requires that you take the intro dive of three specialties one of which could be deep. The deep intro dive would count toward your deep specialty.
SSI: OW --> Deep specialty.
You can "cross over" from PADI to SSI. One of my dive buddies did this. He had PADI OW and was just about to earn his PADI AOW when our dive shop switched from PADI to SSI. He had to take more training to get SSI AOW.
 
Read NW Grateful Diver's articles, including the one on gas management. It was attending his lecture on this topic that first opened my eyes to how little I knew about what I was doing -- and honestly, how little most of the people TEACHING me knew.

Diving deep is easy. You just exhale and go down. Returning from deep dives is a bit more complicated, especially if anything at all goes wrong. (All diving is easy if nothing goes wrong!). The further you are from the surface, the less advisable an immediate return there is as a strategy for problem-solving. Discovering you are low on gas at 30 feet is not much of an issue; discovering it at 100 feet, when you need to get back to the anchor line before you can ascend, is a bigger deal. Losing your buddy, looking for a minute and surfacing is an annoyance on a shallow reef dive; it's much more than that when you are doing your search while using up four times the gas, close to your no-deco limits, and with anxiety pushing up your breathing. Not to mention the cost and irritation of aborting an expensive charter boat wreck dive!

Having a stable platform (stability in the water), good situational awareness, strong buddy skills, and an understanding of gas planning, are very important diving skills which only become more so as you get further from the gas tank in the sky.
 
If I had my shagrins I would be taking rescue, Fundies, nitrox, wreck, deep, a DM course for good meaure, and the whole Cave curriculum from any agency that teaches. Alas, not enough hours or dollars in a day.
Those of you who recommended AOW, instead of the specialty, is there any of the five options you would highly recommend with deep, it seems some of them are gimmes?

If you are thinking about the DM cert make sure you check with the local dive shop you'll be training with. For example, my shop wanted (when they were PADI) all DM candidates to be Master divers. This goes above the minimum requirements set by PADI.

For the 5 specialties I would recommend: Peak performance Bouyancy, Nav, Deep, Wreck, X. Substitute for X the type of diving you'll be doing in your local area (ex. drift, dry suit, nitrox, S&R, etc.). The most important specialty you should take is PPB. Any dive you make will (should) be a PPB dive. You'll also learn how to reduce your weight and fix your trim so you will be more comfortable and relaxed which translates into a safer more confident diver. If you plan to do wreck penetration or cavern/cave then PPB is an absolute must.
 
Peak buoyancy need not be done as a specialty. It should be covered in the OW class but most times is not. Some of us do non cert workshops tailored to the student. Reason being is the by the book buoyacy classes are little more than generic info. A tailored non cert class works to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual and addresses those. Much more effective.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2
 
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