Find one NAUI CD that will train and Instructor with a total 60 dives (loged or not logged).
NAUI instructors don't count dives. There's a minimum set by the agency that's (in my opinion) abysmally low. But in the end it's irrelevent, because the criteria for becoming a DM is "demonstration quality skills" ... and your instructor isn't supposed to pass you until you can meet that criteria. The criteria for becoming an instructor is what's known as the "loved one standard" ... which means that your evaluators are supposed to ask themselves if they would trust someone they love to take a class from you. If, for any reason, the answer is no, then you don't pass ... no matter how many dives you have or what you did previously during your training.
There's some subjectivity in these standards ... but if the evaluators are taking their job seriously then the standards are more than reasonable.
It can be a strength or weakness of the NAUI system, depending on the attitude of the evaluators. But the major difference between PADI and NAUI is that the former relies on standardization while the latter relies on subjectivity. In other words, NAUI prefers to take the approach that their instructors know their students better than some agency personnel at HQ does, and won't pass them unless they can trust them to dive at the level at which they're being trained. In the NAUI program, you can fail someone for an unsafe attitude. In the PADI program, if they meet the minimal skills criteria, you MUST pass them.
Again, both of those systems have benefits and drawbacks ... it entirely depends on the attitude of the person(s) teaching the class.
From my understanding you have to have those specialties to be able to teach them. You dont need them but you can't teach them if you dont have them. That is what I was told by both my NAUI Instructors.
No ... you don't. I never took a drysuit class ... and yet I teach one. I never took a deep specialty ... and yet I teach one.
What NAUI does ... once again ... is assume that their instructors are responsible enough to only train people on topics that they are qualified to train them on. My qualifications for teaching a drysuit class stem from a couple thousand dives in one. My qualifications for teaching a deep class stem from higher-level training that qualifies me to depths well beyond recreational levels.
There are a few specialties that NAUI requires the instructor to have specific training in ... Nitrox, for example ... but for the most part, what they want to know isn't that you have a c-card on that subject, but that you're adequately experienced in the topic to be able to teach it.
Maybe there harder on the Instructors here because this is the Dive capitol of the US and or maybe because NAUI's headcorters is here too I dont know.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that ... the job of the CD is to make sure you can train divers effectively for the conditions in which they were trained. There are some nuances that we have to worry about here in Puget Sound that you don't in Florida ... and vice versa. But otherwise, location has little to do with how hard a CD will make an instructor's training.
I dont know about PADI's IDC but still 100 dives is not that much when you are training people in my opinion.
Particularly with the practice I've seen of people doing simple, short dives just to get their "numbers" up. This is among the reasons why a more subjective criteria ... like demonstration-quality skills ... can be more meaningful. On the other hand, I think PADI also uses a similar criteria ... they just have their own definition of what it means.
I am a NAUI diver and I will stay with NAUI it is nothing against PADI I just dont think they are for me.
As stated previously ... I'm proud of my association with NAUI ... it allows me to train at a level that I feel is appropriate for our local environment without compromising my standards. But, frankly, I know some kick-ass PADI instructors locally too ... they've found a way to train within the standards of their organization that allow them to offer a high-quality product to their students.
All that really tells me is that the attitude of the instructor teaching the class matters far more than the acronym that's printed on the card.
It's far more important to choose the right instructor than the "right" agency ... that's how I ended up with c-cards from a half-dozen agencies. I looked for instructors who had the credentials that were important to me ... and the agency they taught for was incidental ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
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