Which certifications necessary in your experience for various recreational dives across the world?

[fuzzybabybunny]

I got my OW, AOW, and Nitrox about 10 years ago. Since then, I've done boat dives, deep 40m dives, stage bottle dives, solo dives, drysuit dives, drift dives, night dives, and all of them were self-taught through lots of research on my own more or less and I've never really stressed on any of them. I very rarely go with a dive op.

Now I see that PADI and SSI have all of these as paid specialty licenses.

Are these licenses really required? Is it common for dive ops across the world to say you can't, for example, do a drift boat dive on a wall without having the drift, boat, and deep diver certifications?

 

[clownfishsydney]

Depends on where you dive. My experience across the Pacific, Asia etc is that every shop seems to have a different rule, from none to very strict. That being said, I must say that the strictest I have heard of have been some Great Barrier Reef operations, but I have also had two operations that accepted OW with a lot of experience for all dives. Generally, I would say that what you have would satisfy most operators except perhaps deeper than 40 metres in first world countries. Certainly you do not need anything but OW to dive deeper than 40 m in Solomons, PNG, Vanuatu, Chuuk etc when I visited. Experience was sometimes used to decide, but not certifications.

 

[rongoodman]

I've read that some shops require the dry suit cert if you want to rent a suit from them.

 

[scubadada]

Other than OW and nitrox, the only cards I've been asked for, as a requirement to dive, are AOW and Solo. I was asked once for my DPV card to rent from an operator who did not know me.

 

[Marie13]

Depending on wreck and location, some Great Lakes charter ops require AOW and/or Deep. Overall experience and recent cold water experience may be required, as well. If you have solo cert, some will allow you to dive solo. I’ve never seen Nitrox asked for, unless the charter op does fills. You usually supply all your own gear here and haul it to the boat.

 

[maj2]

First, I would not call them specialty "licenses." It is specialty training. There are no "licenses" here.

Second, those certifications were all around 10 years ago when you did your OW, AOW and Nitrox. Heck... most were around 20 years ago when I did my OW.

And finally, to echo what has been said already, I am only asked for proof of specialty certification and/or relevant experience when looking to rent specialty equipment or going on a deep and cold Great Lakes charter.

 

[FreeFlyFreak]

This guy sums it up.

 

[NAM001]

If you have aow and nitrox you should be covered for just about anyithing a normal 2 tank dive could consist of probably anywhere.

 

[AdivingBel]

My understanding is some locales may require CMAS 2 for advanced rec dives which equates (more or less) to Rescue in the PADI world. If someone has specifics on some of the popular locales and situations where this might be the case, I for one would appreciate the input. I've heard reference to it in the S. Pacific as well as some of the Fr. islands in the Caribbean (I'm sure there are others ??). Thanks.

 

[BlueTrin]

In the UK, it’s not common to rent a drysuit.

You will need proof of Nitrox training to get Nitrox fills.

I have been asked to prove that I had an AOW for a dive under OW limit.

I never heard of someone asking you a drift dive card here.

The thing is that some of these cards don’t have an equivalent specialty training for BSAC