PADI v NAUI Master Scuba Diver Rating

[boulderjohn]

BTW, to give you an idea of how the world of scuba has changed in the last half century, when getting a "master" rating mean you had pretty much taken all the courses available at that time, my stack of certification cards is just under 2 inches high, with cards from 5 agencies, but I still do not qualify for ANY agency's master diver rating. I guess I'm just a slacker.

 

[TMHeimer]

Agree with both of you. These discussions are old and just reasons to pass time on SB. Someone looking at my log book and seeing that probably 90% of my dives are 30' or shallower wouldn't know I even had AOW.
But, I'll yet continue the talk. I googled NAUI in a number of places and found a couple of things their MSD covered that PADI doesn't-- Deep/simulated decompression and Air Consumption (practical application). One of the minimum 8 dives can be a skin dive. Nothing at all on the academics except that they are there and to an Instructor's level. Guess I'd have to get a NAUI manual to compare it to the PADI DM course.
As far as PADI's "old" DM course, I'm still waiting for someone to say "Hey, you're a DM--I'll pay you $800 to retrieve my 150 lb. outboard I stupidly dropped into 100 fsw, considering you know all the formulas, weight, displacement, salt water weighing 64 lbs./square foot, etc." Or, someone talking to me about which compartment will now control our second shallower dive instead of just using their computer or even dive tables. Or, to beat a dead horse, exactly how the complete circulatory system works from inhaling-lungs-aveoli-blood-tissues & back and all the related dive issues and embolisms. Seemed complicated enough for me and my shallow dives.

 

[Bob DBF]

There was no real technical training going on. There was no cave training going on. People had no idea what they were doing with wreck training

I guess from your post, that unless there are four letters in charge there is no training. It was the best practices developed by the pioneers in these types of diving that gave the basis for the formal training courses that started some agencies and later were adopted by the popular recreational agencies.

Divers had a good idea what they were doing, only they/we did not have the 40+ years of hind site that you are applying now.

Equipment was rudimentary compared to what we have today. Our knowledge of decompression theory and deep diving mechanics was just beginning.

And without divers using what was available and known at the time and developing "exploration diving", there would be no need for better equipment and formal training.

I have participated in 50+ years of diving and its changes. Although some of the changes I personally find annoying, diving has much better gear, become safer, and has more knowledge and training available than I ever imagined.


Bob

 

[japan-diver]

There are numerous concrete examples of differences between what is taught by the different agencies at different levels NAUI MSD course goes heavily into decompression theory covering Haldanean theory, bubble theory, DCIEM deco theory, US Navy m-values and more. I have not found mention of most of this at any PADI level. The chapters on environment and equipment and much more robust in than in the (new) PADI manuals. There are those who will say I don't need this information to teach OW scuba but NAUI has a core belief that the instructor should be the subject manner expert - therefore being more than "a page ahead" of his students or just knowledgeable of the level he is teaching. I find the knowledge level of the NAUI MSD being much higher than other agencies. I have taught many instructor crossover courses for PADI and SSI instructor to NAUI I use the NAUI MSD test as a pretest for basic scuba knowledge as really none of the information is NAUI specific its dive physics and physiology - the average score over the years for these active instructors is well below a passing grade. I find that instructors that have gone outside their agency or taken technical training tend to do much better on these exams.

 

[kensuf]

OK, folks, prepare to be pissed off.

Back when the few agencies in existence created their versions of Master Diver, or whatever you want to call it, scuba diving was in its infancy. Only a few agencies were teaching only a few classes. If you got the "Master Whatever" rating, you had pretty much exhausted the instructional possibilities. There was no real technical training going on. There was no cave training going on. People had no idea what they were doing with wreck training. Equipment was rudimentary compared to what we have today. Our knowledge of decompression theory and deep diving mechanics was just beginning.

So a person who achieved the master diver rating back then had scored a major certification, something to be proud of. The requirements for those ratings have not changed in the half century since they were created, but the world of scuba has changed dramatically during those years. Thus, to many people, reading posts about whether one agency's "master" rating is superior to another reads a lot like arguing whether an 8th grade education or a 9th grade education demonstrates true mastery of academic content.

The NAUI training progression used to be:

NAUI Scuba Diver (aka Open Water 1)
NAUI Open Water 2 Diver
NAUI Advanced Diver

In 1996, due to market pressure, NAUI renamed the programs but kept the content mostly intact. The old Advanced Diver program became Master Scuba Diver, and the OW2 program became Advanced. So, if you had earned a NAUI Advanced card back in 1985, it is essentially the same as a NAUI Master Scuba Diver in 2017.

When I took Advanced, back in 1982, part of the requirements my instructor placed on us were that each person had to act as DM in terms of planning and leading a dive for the entire group, and we were required to do a deep decompression dive (150'). The deco dive may have been outside of standards back then (I do not have a copy of NAUI's 1982 standards), it would definitely be a standards violation today.

 

[boulderjohn]

I guess from your post, that unless there are four letters in charge there is no training. It was the best practices developed by the pioneers in these types of diving that gave the basis for the formal training courses that started some agencies and later were adopted by the popular recreational agencies.

Is that supposed to be a contradiction?

Yes, in the 1960s, the pioneers were trying to figure out how to dive deep and how to dive in caves safely. If you read pioneering deep diver Sheck Exley's Caverns Measureless to Man, you will see that his earliest deep diving records, made well after the period of which I wrote, are routinely beaten by technical diving students today. Exley did not even begin diving until he was a teenager, the same year PADI was created. Exley also pioneered cave diving safety, and his publication Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival, became the basis for modern cave diving instruction. It was first published in 1979.

So yes, the pioneers of deep diving and cave diving did indeed figure out what we now routinely teach in technical diving and cave diving, but there was no such formal instruction going on in the early to mid 1960s, which is when the names of the certifications we use now were being created.

 

[stuartv]

BTW, to give you an idea of how the world of scuba has changed in the last half century, when getting a "master" rating mean you had pretty much taken all the courses available at that time, my stack of certification cards is just under 2 inches high, with cards from 5 agencies, but I still do not qualify for ANY agency's master diver rating. I guess I'm just a slacker.

What are you missing to qualify for a PADI MSD? What about an SDI MSD? SDI only requires Rescue, which you must have, as a Pro, and 4 other specialties. You don't have 4 other specialties? Or is it just that you don't have all of them in any one agency?

 

[boulderjohn]

What are you missing to qualify for a PADI MSD? What about an SDI MSD? SDI only requires Rescue, which you must have, as a Pro, and 4 other specialties. You don't have 4 other specialties? Or is it just that you don't have all of them in any one agency?

Taking specialty classes is one way to get further training. It is not the only way. If you want to get further training, you have many options. Here is how I have nearly two inches of cards but do not qualify for MSD:

• After getting Rescue certification, I got my DM certification, and then assistant instructor, and then instructor, and then MSDT.
• You may note that MSDT requires the ability to teach at least 5 specialties, but you do not have to have the specialties themselves to teach them. You can acquire the required knowledge and experience through other means. As an example, I was certified as a DPV diver through one agency, and I was certified as a DPV diver in an overhead environment by another. That makes me well-qualified to teach the PADI DPV specialty, even though I do not have the PADI DPV specialty myself. Over the years I became certified to teach a heck of a lot of specialties that way. Each one of those gives you a card.
• I designed several Distinctive Specialty courses and got them approved.
• I started tech training with TDI, getting certifications through AN/DP.
• My tech instructor crossed over to UTD, and I got a number of certifications through UTD.
• I got all my cave diving certifications through NSS-CDS. It takes 4 to complete the standard cave diving program.
• I crossed back to TDI and got certified through Advanced trimix.
• I became a TDI instructor, getting the certifications required for that.
• I became a TDI instructor for advanced gas blending.
• I took PSAI courses for cave DPV and cave sidemount.
• As a tech instructor, I crossed over to PADI, thus gaining certifications for their tech classes through trimix.
• I became a PADI trimix gas blender instructor.

My point in this is to show that there is a heck of a lot if instruction available to people these days that does not require classes with the name "specialty." I only have a couple of specialty certifications, but I have spent a long time getting instruction in other ways, and I gathered a lot of cards along the way. No, I don't qualify for the MSD certification, but I am sure not going to go out and take a specialty I don't need in order to gain a certification I don't need.

 

[stuartv]

I only have a couple of specialty certifications

Ah ha! Gotcha. A bunch of instructor and tech diver certs. All is clear now.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It is important/useful if you have to lift very big/heavy/sensitive items from the bottom.

I've been involved in lifting objects that required as much as 2000 lbs of lift. We were using barrels in this case ... four of them attached to the corners of a sling. We just kept adding air until the objects floated. No calculations were required or used.

Likewise when I was building the reef, using a 400 lb lift bag. I did keep a second bag handy, but never had to use it ... thankfully so, since I did all this work while diving solo, and moving 400 lbs of rocks at a time was probably a good limit.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)