PADI Beyond Master Scuba Diver

[saxman242]

Someone with 150 dives including 30 or 40 class dives versus a diver who completed 100 dives and a Fundies course, who is likely to be the better trained?

After doing a bunch of resort diving recently and coming across quite a few people with 100+ dives that couldn't find their way out of a paperbag, I think both groups would be a huge improvement over the status quo.

 

[TheRealScubaSteve]

May I ask with under which agencies you've trained? Everyone knows I recommend GUE fundies or UTD Essentials. Fundies was a cold shower for me, and gave me additional tools for improving my teaching.

I do believe agency framework can play a large part. I say can, as not all instructors take advantage of their respective agencies' framework (example: SDI, NAUI both allow instructors to add skills/performance requirements/dives).

SDI and SSI. SDI was my advanced course and the one I was least happy with overall. There was nothing bad about it, but rather I felt like I was not challenged enough. I was hesitant to take the course early as I felt my skills were not good enough, but I think I would have gotten more out of it with less experience. This is where I now see extra value in private instructors, or those willing to more specifically cater to my needs/wants.

I've read a lot about fundies over the years and it interests me a lot to hone my skills.

 

[Efka76]

For the OP, which 20 specialties would you envision taking?

I find 31 national specialties. By 20, my rough grouping leaves you a sidemount advanced-rebreather altitude ice cavern wreck dry dpv diver. Which takes a broad dive environment. With a few fillers. If well taught you could learn a lot. Though a *good* intro to tech would likely make you more competent in the water than doing this slip shod. Or you get heavy into the environment and photography. I agree the dive count needs bumping up to match the onslaught of classes.

Nitrox
Nav
Night
Boat
Deep

Search and Recovery
Delay SMB
Peak Performance Buoyancy
Emergency O2
Multilevel diver (two and three level dives with eRDPML)

Drift
DPV
Sidemount
Cavern
Wreck

Dry
Ice
Altitude
Rebreather
Advanced Rebreather

FFM

Fish ID
Project Aware
AWARE Shark Conservation
Coral Reef Conservation
Dive Against Debris

Equipment Specialist
Underwater Naturalist
Underwater Photographer (Digital)
Underwater Videographer
Adaptive Techniques

I have the followong specialties:

Drysuit - it was good to try cold water diving to understand whether I will like it. Also, gor few specific skills required for drysuit diving.

Nitrox - is a must if you want to go to tech diving. Also, without this specialty you will not get nitrox fills.

Search and recobery - really liked it as I learned various search patterns, praftically tried recovery of various objects.

Deep - it was interesting to dive to 40 m depth and see how nitrogen narcosis could affect me. Basically did not learn anything new, however, some LOBs require this specialty if dive sites are deeper than 30m

Uw naturalist - useless waste of money

Drift - practically the same as above.

Wreck - learned some basic wreck diving protocols, however, for serious wreck diving a much rigorous training woild be required.

Night - night diving was interesting, however, from skills point of view, no additional skills learned.

From remaining and useful padi soecialties are Ice diving and DPV. Maybe will take them in a future foe the sake of fun. Remaining padi soecialties are useless for me or should be taken with other agencies (eg cavern, rebreather, sidemount)

 

[Bert van den Berg]

How about 5 stars if you're still alive after 2000 dives?

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

SDI was my advanced course and the one I was least happy with overall. There was nothing bad about it, but rather I felt like I was not challenged enough.

That’s disappointing to read because SDI allows instructors to add to courses in meaningful, appropriate ways. They encourage it actually (I’ve had very positive reactions for the syllabi I have sent to them for review). Every SDI instructor should (yes, I know not all do) provide students with an addendum to the course that informs the student what they add so that the student has a clear understanding of what they will learn and the performance requirements.

Every single con ed course should be challenging/informative (added informative for nitrox).

 

[scubadada]

How about 5 stars if you're still alive after 2000 dives?

I only have 109 dives to go

 

[tursiops]

Deep - it was interesting to dive to 40 m depth and see how nitrogen narcosis could affect me. Basically did not learn anything new, however, some LOBs require this specialty if dive sites are deeper than 30m

Uw naturalist - useless waste of money

Drift - practically the same as above.

Night - night diving was interesting, however, from skills point of view, no additional skills learned.

I'm sorry you had a poor instructor for these classes. There are useful skills and fascinating knowledge associated with all of them.

 

[Ben_3]

'Personal opinion' I do think there are more than enough levels and titles as is..

 

[Steve_C]

MSD is not a professional rating. It represents taking a certain number of certs and a certain number of dives. Those are fine. I did a MSD with SDI. Learned some stuff. But I do not see a point to taking a bunch of certs just get to a star whatever that means. Take whatever courses you want from whatever agency you want. Dive a bunch. It is a rec rating. Do whatever feels good.

I was actually looking around a year ago to see if there were any fun courses to take that interested me. Could not find any. Toyed with fish ID but the LDS shop I checked with (PADI) told me not to bother. Knew I was a level 3 REEF surveyor for that region already. Not personally interested in GUE or Tech or Cave. So just dive.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Toyed with fish ID.

There should be a requirement for someone to have a background in some marine science field or indicate actual knowledge.

I can't imagine me teaching such a course:

"Oh, there's a big fish!"

"Hey, a pretty fish!"

"Oh man, that's an ugly fish."