Certification Requirements?

[Thalassamania]

It's all about liability and what the non-diving lawyers tell the dive ops. Some will follow the legal advice to the letter. Others may choose to ignore them. At least the dive ops know the different levels of cards. There's a guy that has a lake on his property and was once told only AOW certified divers should be allow to dive there. He won't let instructors dive the lake without first showing an AOW card. And, BTW, the max depth of the lake is in the 250' range...

Your guy at the lake is the rare nutter. What is really going on in the industry is an attempt by agencies to get their product(s) in place as an access barrier. It's driven purely by profit not by liability or insurance considerations.

 

[RonFrank]

We dove with the now defunct Aquanuts several years back. My cousin is a life long diver, but I was not sure what certs she had. Even with a diving history dating back to the early 70's, they said she would need an AOW cert to do the deeper wrecks, or to hire a guide.

Fortunately as it turns out, she has more certs than most instructors (a lot of these are marine Biology certs), and my worry about AOW was a non-issue. However had she NOT had the certs, they did not give a fig how much she had dove, she would have had to hire a guide, or skip the dive.

The Keys are strict about AOW certs for deep dives.

One suggestion would be to work with Brent (Blue Water Divers), or Gary (Conch Republic). They can approve experienced folks for deep diving, and certify newish OW divers for AOW as well. I know both of them will work with you on this. The downside is you have to book with a great dive Op!