AOW? Joke? Meaningless?

[george_austin]

One of the points in taking something like AOW is that if you do have a mind to become a real "diver" instead of someone who dives is that hopefully, some of the easier, rudimentary skills practiced will inspire you to further investigate those topics outside of or after the class. Many people who dive, and this isn't a criticism, will kind of understand how a regulator works, but not really understand the engineering principles of operations. Maybe this interests you and I guarantee when you get on a boat and someone has an issue with their regulator and there you are to sort it out - they're going to think of you as someone who is a very valuable resource - this instills more confidence you have in yourself. That is just one example. Another is that people check out the way you dive - everyone is always comparing and discriminating - human nature. When other divers or people who dive see you underwater with perfect buoyancy, looking totally comfortablel, in good trim with no air in your BC at 100 fsw, people notice. People talk.
There is no substitute for a ton of dives in different places - warm water, cold water, high seas or flat - your personal experience diving kind of sets you apart as the guy who's always smiling and humble no matter what is going on. Willing to help, knowing how to help, when not to - all that stuff. Hell, just the way you put your fins on back on the stern sometimes will tell the captain and crew that "Here's a guy that knows what he's doing" (they also look at how much weight you carry in your "recreational" configuration. An experienced and competent diver almost always carries much less weight than most of the other "hobbyists" - I'm talking about an example of someone in a 1/4 inch wetsuit and hood with gloves and everything - not a GUE type with aluminum tanks and stuff rigged up to him and in a drysuit etc - I'm just talking about my experience as 75% of my own experience as a very active California diver -

Don't get discouraged, been there done that and got the T shirt. Just dive yer azz off til you drop. Great post

---------- Post added August 5th, 2015 at 10:55 AM ----------

Maybe THAT'S why I catch so much grief here! I'm Russian! Kidding. Really, I spent 17 years roadracing motorcycles. The kind where you go 160+ MPH into Turn 1 at Daytona, (or Virginia International Raceway or numerous others), lean the bike over and drag your knees through the turns.

Some would say I'm crazy and have a warped sense of danger. However, I might point out a long career that includes winning several regional amateur championships, all while having better stats for actually completing races than any other racer I know who also competed at, say, the top 5 level consistently.

I call it finely honed risk assessment and mitigation skills, plus significant experience of maintaining calm and focus under threat of imminent death or significant injury.

Or maybe my perception of risk in an OW rec dive is just skewed...

_________________________________________________________________________

Ha. I race bikes as well and risk assessment is usually only on my mind while I wait for the day of the events. I have no time to think of danger or death on the track because I'm too busy deciding my entry point and exit point for a turn or figuring out a pass. I have a finite number of brain cells available to spend on side issues while loving the race and dreading the final lap because the fun will be over.
On the other hand, people always say -"how can you do that, its so dangerous!" Well, not if you are prepared and know where the line is that you dare not cross. I know my limitations and while there is a limit to how far my skill can carry me - it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to go right to that limit. I don't race for money or fame so my attitude is what is the pay off for this - for me it may be a formica board little plaque -
Diving for me? the pay off is just pure fun so I need not do anything but prepare myself to have fun and be safe.

 

[dmaziuk]

I agree....and in 17 years he is almost sure to have one that is pear-shaped, or be buddied with one, or see one.

Well... say, assume 17 years = 17 diving vacations = ~ 400 dives... maybe.


Anyway, until and unless I have one of those, I'll continue personally rating a OOA in 40m of open water about on par with an idjit opening the door of their parked penis substitute as I ride past it. Because if I'm lucky I can walk away from either with just a skin rash and if I'm not lucky... actually, the chances of drowning victim being resuscitated are infinitely better than those of a roidkill.


Edit: and since some readers obviously will interpret the above as "I plan my dives so that I'll end up in those situations" -- no. I don't. It's a pure hypothetical that has nothing to do with how I dive. Or ride.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

OK... so I might sound a little snarky or superior when answering this, but I really don't mean it that way. Please read it as intended with a pleasant tone:

Navigation

Counting kicks for 100 feet - Yea, OK, nice to know I kick 25 times for 100 feet. So?
Compass out-and-back, and square - In poor visibility or at night, this might be helpful. But, I found this shockingly rudimentary. I was a boy scout and am pilot and engineer, so maybe my skills are above average. I could have done this without training, half asleep, and missing one eye. In fact, skills that I would have thought useful to help compensate for drift were not even discussed.​

Deep

Wow, look at this crushed water bottle - Yea, so.
Hey, look his red shorts are not red! - Yea, so.
​

Boat

Giant Stride with rope loose in hand - Yes, I'd never done this before, but mastered it on the 1st try.
Look up, there's the boat, don't hit it - Done this before and knew not to surface under the boat.
Fins off and ladder exit - Done this many times before, and learned nothing new.​

Night

Giant Stride with flashlight on and in hand - I always fumble with this a little, since I am also securing other gear and mask/reg during the entry.
Underwater signals in the dark - easy to forget sometimes, but obvious once you've done it.
Don't blind me bro - always happens anyway​

Drift

Here, hold this rope - I'd never done this before, but it was simple.
Deploy DSMB - I asked to do this, since I had never done it before. It would not have happened otherwise. I wish I could do it several more times with an instructor's help.

​

What you got was what most agencies offer ... five "experience" dives, which they sell to students coming fresh out of OW as "five more supervised dives". It's an "experience" thing, and they don't expect you to learn much.

What would have been more beneficial to you is to look at offerings more local to you. There are plenty of instructors here in the Pacific Northwest who teach a class more suitable for local diving. I'm one of them. Compare and contrast your skills list with what I offer for the same class ... starting with the fact that my class offers 8-10 hours of class work, followed by a minimum of six dives. There are no electives ... each dive focuses on specific skills, and subsequent dives build off of skills introduced in previous ones. All dives are done while neutrally buoyant, and the final dive is done completely mid-water, holding a depth of 20 feet ... generally, with typical northwest vis this means you can see neither the bottom nor the surface, and must depend entirely on your gauges to hold your position where you want it to be.

Navigation ... start with class work, discussing proper use of compass, natural navigation, and a technique known as "mental mapping" where you use depth, time and direction to build a "map" in your head as you travel to help you figure out where you are at all times relative to your starting point. The first dive is a navigation course consisting of several flags. The first flag is at the buoy where you begin, and has a heading to the next flag ... which will have a heading to the next flag ... etc. The final flag simply says "Home", and at that point your objective is to get back to the buoy where you began. There are additional navigation exercises in subsequent dives, but they are used in combination with other required skills to get you used to task-loading. I don't do fin kicks ... for most local diving, it's not something someone would ever do outside of the class. As the end of this first dive, we'll do a weight check in 8 feet of water, with your tank at its targeted reserve of 500 psi.

Gas Management ... the second dive of the class we're going to measure your gas consumption under both relaxed and stressed conditions. Part of the classwork will explain to you why you'd want to know this, and how to use it to plan your gas requirements for a given dive ... which is particularly useful for the deep dive, since it's helpful to know how much gas you'll need for that dive as part of your basic dive plan (another subject that's covered rather in-depth in the classwork). We do timed measurements, one while kicking hard to simulate diving in current, and one while kicking normally. The idea is to show you how exertion affects your consumption rate. After we've done the measurements, we practice DSMB deployments.

Deep Dive ... before you do this dive you'll be working with a dive plan to determine how much gas you'll need. The idea of that exercise is to show the typical diver why diving to 100 feet on an AL80 is generally not a good idea. You'll do some contingency planning ... to determine how much gas you and your buddy would need to surface from the planned max depth if one of you ran OOA and you both had to breathe off of one tank while ascending. During the dive I'm going to be looking for proper buddy positioning (deep dive is NOT the place you want to stray from a buddy), communication between buddies, and attention to sticking to the dive plan. At some point, generally at the deep part of the dive, I'm going to swim up to you, spit out my reg, and slash my hand across my throat ... I want to see if you have the presence of mind to react to an OOA signal at a time when you're not expecting it and probably a bit narc'd. After the dive we'll calculate how much gas you actually used, compare it to what you predicted you'd need, and discuss the reasons why there may be some variance ... if in fact there is any.

Night Dive ... what I'm looking for here is (again) adherence to a plan, good buddy skills and communication, backup light deployment, and navigation (you and your buddy will have to take us back to our entry point to end the dive).

Search & Recovery ... I'm going to carelessly lose some objects, and the two of you will have to find them. Once found, the largest of those objects (a cinder block with a dive flag painted on the side) will need to be brought to the surface using a lift bag. The two of you will work together to rig, deploy, and use the lift bag appropriately, making a controlled ascent while lifting the object to the surface. Other lost objects will require different search patterns, like expanding box or semi-circular ... the latter making use of a reel to control the search parameters. Once again, the objectives don't just include finding the lost objects, but also good buddy skills, appropriate fin kicks and buoyancy control (so as to not stir up the bottom which would ruin your chances for a successful search), and proper attention to your air supply.

Mid-Water Nav Dive ... the final dive of class involves doing timed navigation patterns in mid-water, where you can't use the bottom as a visual reference. One buddy gets the compass, the other gets the depth gauge/bottom timer ... in order to do the dive successfully you must work together. The objective of this dive isn't navigation at all ... it's being able to control your buoyancy while task-loaded. It's also to drive home that there's more to being a dive buddy than just swimming in the general vicinity of another diver ... you must "swim to be seen" by each other, and use effective communication to maintain proper depth and make heading adjustments at the proper time. It's a challenging dive, and anybody who can manage it WILL come out of this course feeling like they learned something ... I know divemasters who have difficulty doing it.

I generally do not accept divers straight out of OW ... I want you to be comfortable with everything you've learned in OW before taking this class, and offer workshops to those who want "supervised dives" post OW rather than another certification. Generally speaking, if you come out of this or any other class feeling like you didn't learn anything, then I didn't do my job as an instructor to make sure you got your money's worth from the class you took. So far ... in 11 years of teaching the class this way ... I haven't heard a single person claim the class was too easy, or that they didn't learn anything ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added August 5th, 2015 at 10:57 AM ----------

We are all constantly learning, at least I hope so. How you get that learning varies. How fast you learn that varies. For example, a very active SB participant ihas (according to another thread) amassed 35 dives in the few months that he has been diving, and he has been able in that time to achieve a level of understanding such that he is able to teach those of us with hundreds and thousands of dives all the stuff we have somehow missed or misunderstood in the many years we have been diving. Those of us who have open minds and are always willing to learn are blessed to have a prodigy who has already learned everything there is to know about diving correct us with such absolute and unshakeable certainty. I am grateful to be in such a presence so I can extend my knowledge.

He is indeed a prodigy ... it usually takes about 50 dives to achieve that level of mastery ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[kelemvor]

Some ops require an AOW card for certain dives regardless of your actual skill level. Now you've got it. That was the main benefit I saw in having AOW. If you had a good OW class, there shouldn't be a ton left to cover in AOW in my opinion.

I didn't know that America On Line taught scuba, but I know an advanced Open Water class is designed for the new diver to have 5 more experience dives under instruction with an instructor.

That must differ by agency (or instructor?). I was not allowed to take AOW until I had 25 logged dives not counting the ones I logged during OW class.

Or maybe my instructor just didn't teach it as designed.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Not sure I'd agree 100%, but I know what you are saying. I find British and Scandanavian trained divers tend on the whole to be pretty good. But the quality of some Asian trained divers (yeah, I'm looking at you, Japan...) can be patchy. And Russian divers I normally consider a statistic waiting to happen, although that is more about mentality than training.

... if the Chinese divers I ran into ... or more accurately, who landed on me ... in the Maldives were anything to go by, training isn't even required to get a c-card in that country ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[stuartv]

Ha. I race bikes as well and risk assessment is usually only on my mind while I wait for the day of the events. I have no time to think of danger or death on the track because I'm too busy deciding my entry point and exit point for a turn or figuring out a pass.

Risk assessment and mitigation is virtually 100% of the time. During a race an example would be: I'm in 3rd place, coming up on the final turn before the finish line. I have the option to attempt to pass the guy in front of me and take 2nd place. You CAN only think about the danger of crashing and whether you would be hurt, along with hitting your turn-in point, hitting your apex, etc.. For me the risk assessment is a bigger picture. Am I in contention for a championship? Will the extra points for 2nd place versus 3rd place make a difference in my championship standings? If I try to pass, I might crash. Or, he might crash trying to keep me behind him and he could take me out in the process. If I crash, I could get hurt. I would also get zero points for the race. Do I have enough of a points lead in the championship standings such that crashing out would affect the standings. Is the extra 3 points or so for 2nd place in this race worth the risk? Mitigation: I could pass on the outside, but that would make me more likely to get taken out if he crashes. Can I pass on the inside? If so, the mitigates the risk somewhat.

To me, whether you're talking about scuba or motorcycle racing, every decision you make in preparation and planning and every decision you make during execution should always reflect due diligence for risk assessment and mitigation. I believe, from experience, that many bad results in racing (whether that means a crash, a mechanical DNF, or simply a poor finish) result from failures in risk assessment and mitigation prior to the start of the race. Oh, you had a DNF because you decided you could get one more race on that chain? You failed to assess the risk of that decision properly and take the steps to mitigate that risk. And, though I don't yet have a lot of experience, from my "book larnin'" so far, it seems the scuba diving is very similar. Many bad results actually trace back to failures of risk assessment and/or mitigation prior to ever getting in the water. But, there are also many bad results that really only trace back to failures of risk assessment and mitigation during execution (i.e. while in the water).

Maybe when I'm more experienced I will feel comfortable in identifying "things" in scuba where I don't need to assess risk (and therefore, don't need to take steps to mitigate). But, I hope not. I feel like being anal about that in roadracing was a BIG contributor to the success I had. I was RARELY the fastest guy out there. I was USUALLY the most consistent in terms of actually finishing (and finishing reasonably well, actually). In scuba terms, my number of ascents were ALMOST equal to my number of descents. :-D

 

[boulderjohn]

If you find a decent dive operation with good instructors and tell them what you want to learn and at what level, they will tell you what classes you should take to get to the level you want. The different agencies will give you different names of classes and different certifications when you get there, but what does that matter? If you spend the right amount of time in the right classes with the right instructor, you will come out with some certification cards, but most importantly, you will learn what you wanted to learn.

 

[Centrals]

... if the Chinese divers I ran into ... or more accurately, who landed on me ... in the Maldives were anything to go by, training isn't even required to get a c-card in that country ...... Bob (Grateful Diver)

They can buy what ever card from what ever agencies in that commie country. Everything is fake except fraud!!!
We, Hong Kongers, just keep a safe distance from them.

 

[george_austin]

risk assessment and mitigation is virtually 100% of the time. During a race an example would be: I'm in 3rd place, coming up on the final turn before the finish line. I have the option to attempt to pass the guy in front of me and take 2nd place. You can only think about the danger of crashing and whether you would be hurt, along with hitting your turn-in point, hitting your apex, etc.. For me the risk assessment is a bigger picture. Am i in contention for a championship? Will the extra points for 2nd place versus 3rd place make a difference in my championship standings? If i try to pass, i might crash. Or, he might crash trying to keep me behind him and he could take me out in the process. If i crash, i could get hurt. I would also get zero points for the race. Do i have enough of a points lead in the championship standings such that crashing out would affect the standings. Is the extra 3 points or so for 2nd place in this race worth the risk? Mitigation: I could pass on the outside, but that would make me more likely to get taken out if he crashes. Can i pass on the inside? If so, the mitigates the risk somewhat.

To me, whether you're talking about scuba or motorcycle racing, every decision you make in preparation and planning and every decision you make during execution should always reflect due diligence for risk assessment and mitigation. I believe, from experience, that many bad results in racing (whether that means a crash, a mechanical dnf, or simply a poor finish) result from failures in risk assessment and mitigation prior to the start of the race. Oh, you had a dnf because you decided you could get one more race on that chain? You failed to assess the risk of that decision properly and take the steps to mitigate that risk. And, though i don't yet have a lot of experience, from my "book larnin'" so far, it seems the scuba diving is very similar. Many bad results actually trace back to failures of risk assessment and/or mitigation prior to ever getting in the water. But, there are also many bad results that really only trace back to failures of risk assessment and mitigation during execution (i.e. While in the water).

Maybe when i'm more experienced i will feel comfortable in identifying "things" in scuba where i don't need to assess risk (and therefore, don't need to take steps to mitigate). But, i hope not. I feel like being anal about that in roadracing was a big contributor to the success i had. I was rarely the fastest guy out there. I was usually the most consistent in terms of actually finishing (and finishing reasonably well, actually). In scuba terms, my number of ascents were almost equal to my number of descents. :-d

omg lol

 

[gr8jab]

What you got was what most agencies offer ... five "experience" dives, which they sell to students coming fresh out of OW as "five more supervised dives". It's an "experience" thing, and they don't expect you to learn much.

What would have been more beneficial to you is to look at offerings more local to you. There are plenty of instructors here in the Pacific Northwest who teach a class more suitable for local diving. I'm one of them. Compare and contrast your skills list with what I offer for the same class ... starting with the fact that my class offers 8-10 hours of class work, followed by a minimum of six dives. There are no electives ... each dive focuses on specific skills, and subsequent dives build off of skills introduced in previous ones. All dives are done while neutrally buoyant, and the final dive is done completely mid-water, holding a depth of 20 feet ... generally, with typical northwest vis this means you can see neither the bottom nor the surface, and must depend entirely on your gauges to hold your position where you want it to be.

Navigation ... start with class work, discussing proper use of compass, natural navigation, and a technique known as "mental mapping" where you use depth, time and direction to build a "map" in your head as you travel to help you figure out where you are at all times relative to your starting point. The first dive is a navigation course consisting of several flags. The first flag is at the buoy where you begin, and has a heading to the next flag ... which will have a heading to the next flag ... etc. The final flag simply says "Home", and at that point your objective is to get back to the buoy where you began. There are additional navigation exercises in subsequent dives, but they are used in combination with other required skills to get you used to task-loading. I don't do fin kicks ... for most local diving, it's not something someone would ever do outside of the class. As the end of this first dive, we'll do a weight check in 8 feet of water, with your tank at its targeted reserve of 500 psi.

Gas Management ... the second dive of the class we're going to measure your gas consumption under both relaxed and stressed conditions. Part of the classwork will explain to you why you'd want to know this, and how to use it to plan your gas requirements for a given dive ... which is particularly useful for the deep dive, since it's helpful to know how much gas you'll need for that dive as part of your basic dive plan (another subject that's covered rather in-depth in the classwork). We do timed measurements, one while kicking hard to simulate diving in current, and one while kicking normally. The idea is to show you how exertion affects your consumption rate. After we've done the measurements, we practice DSMB deployments.

Deep Dive ... before you do this dive you'll be working with a dive plan to determine how much gas you'll need. The idea of that exercise is to show the typical diver why diving to 100 feet on an AL80 is generally not a good idea. You'll do some contingency planning ... to determine how much gas you and your buddy would need to surface from the planned max depth if one of you ran OOA and you both had to breathe off of one tank while ascending. During the dive I'm going to be looking for proper buddy positioning (deep dive is NOT the place you want to stray from a buddy), communication between buddies, and attention to sticking to the dive plan. At some point, generally at the deep part of the dive, I'm going to swim up to you, spit out my reg, and slash my hand across my throat ... I want to see if you have the presence of mind to react to an OOA signal at a time when you're not expecting it and probably a bit narc'd. After the dive we'll calculate how much gas you actually used, compare it to what you predicted you'd need, and discuss the reasons why there may be some variance ... if in fact there is any.

Night Dive ... what I'm looking for here is (again) adherence to a plan, good buddy skills and communication, backup light deployment, and navigation (you and your buddy will have to take us back to our entry point to end the dive).

Search & Recovery ... I'm going to carelessly lose some objects, and the two of you will have to find them. Once found, the largest of those objects (a cinder block with a dive flag painted on the side) will need to be brought to the surface using a lift bag. The two of you will work together to rig, deploy, and use the lift bag appropriately, making a controlled ascent while lifting the object to the surface. Other lost objects will require different search patterns, like expanding box or semi-circular ... the latter making use of a reel to control the search parameters. Once again, the objectives don't just include finding the lost objects, but also good buddy skills, appropriate fin kicks and buoyancy control (so as to not stir up the bottom which would ruin your chances for a successful search), and proper attention to your air supply.

Mid-Water Nav Dive ... the final dive of class involves doing timed navigation patterns in mid-water, where you can't use the bottom as a visual reference. One buddy gets the compass, the other gets the depth gauge/bottom timer ... in order to do the dive successfully you must work together. The objective of this dive isn't navigation at all ... it's being able to control your buoyancy while task-loaded. It's also to drive home that there's more to being a dive buddy than just swimming in the general vicinity of another diver ... you must "swim to be seen" by each other, and use effective communication to maintain proper depth and make heading adjustments at the proper time. It's a challenging dive, and anybody who can manage it WILL come out of this course feeling like they learned something ... I know divemasters who have difficulty doing it.

I generally do not accept divers straight out of OW ... I want you to be comfortable with everything you've learned in OW before taking this class, and offer workshops to those who want "supervised dives" post OW rather than another certification. Generally speaking, if you come out of this or any other class feeling like you didn't learn anything, then I didn't do my job as an instructor to make sure you got your money's worth from the class you took. So far ... in 11 years of teaching the class this way ... I haven't heard a single person claim the class was too easy, or that they didn't learn anything ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Hi Bob,

I would enjoy your training very much. I don't dive here in the PNW. I know people will flame me for 'makes you a better diver', and 'dry suit' and all that. I've tried it. I don't enjoy it.

Maybe, if there were a Caribbean Bob, I could learn from him.

Thanks for the great reply.