Comparison of all agencies

[rjvencken]

Being a PADI instructor I am sometimes asked how all those agencies compare and I don't have a decent answer and bluff my way through! And prospective students would like to know..

I'm not talking about the technical diving details that agency fanboys get excited over , meanwhile boring to death anyone with a life outside diving. What I'm looking for is a comparison for ALL agencies of their approaches to teaching and diving in a readable overview, not endless discussion as I found in many topic in this section.

 

[Walter]

Are you looking for a chart of requirements or something else?

 

[smellzlikefish]

There are two differences the way I see it. First has to do with their markets. PADI seems to cater to the recreational diver demographic, while NAUI seems to pander more to the working diver. SDI-I have no experience with this agency.

The second difference is in the dive tables that they use. They are all based on the old Navy tables, but for some profiles, NAUI tables are more conservative, and for others PADI tables are. My scientific diving instructor showed this through an example of some scientists doing three square dives to 60 feet for I think it was 60 minutes and asking us, according to NAUI PADI and the navy tables, who would finish up their day first. I believe two of them got bent diving the Naui tables, yet the PADI tables gave them much shorter surface intervals. I am certainly NOT saying that NAUI is better than PADI, since for other profiles PADI tables are more conservative. All tables are based on arbitrary numbers that seem to work for most people.

 

[Rhone Man]

For my money - all the diving anoraks can pick out small variations between the major agencies in terms of training, but the similarities are more marked than the differences. They are all very, very similar. WRSTC standards have caused a huge gravitation towards the middle.

 

[bwerb]

I believe that it's much more important to find a great instructor regardless of agency affiliation. A great instructor will give you the foundational knowledge and skills you require no matter which text book they work from or c-card they sign-off on.

The Red Baron once said: "It's not the crate, it's the man in the crate."

 

[theshred201]

Just curious, but by ALL agencies do you truly mean all or just the basic, major agencies. If you really want to do all of them, you have a lot of work to do with:
ANDI
PADI
NAUI
SSI
SDI/TDI/ERDI
GUE
UTD
IANTD
IDEA
MDEA
NACD (Cave Diving)
YMCA
NSS-CDS (Cave Diving)
PSAI
PDIC
And plenty of others.

 

[DevonDiver]

I've taught for PADI, SSI and BSAC. At a basic level, the courses are virtually identical in terms of what skills/requirements you have. I know this has been said before - but differences in terms of quality and attention to detail occur at the instructor/school level, rather than with the agencies.

More marked differences occur between agencies as you progress into the realm of more advanced/technical diving.

 

[smellzlikefish]

Threshred-you're missing AAUS

 

[theshred201]

I said there were plenty of others. For example, I also didn't put CMAS or AUSI. My point was just to ask if he really wants to compare ALL agencies or just the bigger names.

 

[Rhone Man]

This seems to be a fairly comprehensive list:

List of diver training organizations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia