From PADI OpenWater to SSI Advanced Open Water Diver?

[RogueClimber]

Advanced Adventurer is basically a sample platter and not a level of training from SSI, just a cool card to have

The quote is from SSI's website description of Advanced Adventurer

This program allows you to experience five different open water dives from five SSI Specialty programs without requiring you to complete the entire Specialty. If you are unsure of your next step, this is the perfect way to advance your dive skills and experience, and to identify which Specialty programs interest you. You will earn the SSI Advanced Adventurer certification after completing this program.

Attention: The Advanced Adventurer certification is not counted towards the AOWD Recognition. To achieve one or more specialty certification(s) for the AOWD, you may decide to complete one or more of these specialties. Your dives from the Advanced Adventurer course will of course be counted.

SSI's progression (That seems to matter beyond cards) is Open Water Diver, Specialty Diver -- 12 dives and two specialty course, Advanced Open Water Diver -- 24 dives and four specialty courses, and then Master Diver 50 dives and the addition of Rescue Diver to previous training.

 

[Zef]

Highly recommend the NAUI training progression. All the dives necessary for certification at each level are included in the construct of the certification course. Specialty courses are available to explore areas of interest more in-depth if desired and are not mandatory.

The primary area that I disagree with the NAUI progression is that they do not require Rescue prior to their Master Diver cert. Just about everything that was covered in my PADI Rescue Diver course had been previously covered in my NAUI Master Diver course, but it seems odd to me that NAUI does not require this level of certification as a pre-requisite to enrolling in the Master Diver course and then having the rescue part of the Master Diver curriculum serve as a refresher.

SSI and PADI seem to be grabbing for people's wallets by making the specialty courses part of their certification programs for levels above basic open water...their systems are also ripe for divers to pad their training with specialty classes that don't necessarily add value to developing actual diving skils that make the diver more capable in the water. For example: With a standard regulator and mask setup one cannot readily discuss the plant life and animal life while executing a dive, so while these are nice skills to have in general they don't really increase a diver's in-water capability...the prevailing mentality of don't touch the flora and fauna instilled in during basic open water training is fairly sufficient to safely execute the majority of dives one will conduct.

-Z