Night diving, qualification required?

[CT-Rich]

I don't agree. Unless you're talking about really crappy viz (below some 2-3 meters). Even typical green water diving with 4-8 meters viz is quite different from real night diving, when it's nearly pitch dark on the surface and total blackout below if your light dies.


Very good advice. I prefer night diving on sites I've dived at least once during the day.



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Typos are a feature, not a bug

Crappy visibility is a relative term. 3m is not considered terrible in these parts, certainly not great and not bad enough to call a dive. Getting in the water and finding visibility under 1m is not that different from night diving. If you can function and navigate in less than 1m (enjoyment is another matter) you can manage night diving. Really the darkness is mostly a problem for your head space. If you start thinking about all the night predators and zombies corpses.... well its not because its dark, it because of you are letting it freak you out.

 

[dmoore19]

Night dives I have participated in allowed us to turn off our lights, let the eyes adjust and we could still see an amazing amount of life.

My first night dive was when in Cozumel, a night drift dive. That was my dive first trip in the ocean. When I finished the trip and got home I had a total of 7 ocean dives under my belt.

 

[NAM001]

Yea bob i have seen them when you posted them, you have quite a collection of them. Unlike you the normal diver does not bring to the dock/boat the credentials you have. Cards are just that cards but they represent a level of training that somewhat reduces the liability risk taken by operators. Whether the diver can dive to the standards that card represents is another matter. Normally the only card i ever need is my nitrox card. Ow is a prereq and most assume i have an aow because of it. Its not a fair assumption but one just the same. Of course being an old guy and having a basic bw/p rig it swings the benifit of any doubt that may exist.

I have a drawer full of cards. Other than my full cave, trimix and instructor cards, they've stayed in the drawer since the day I received them and tossed them in there ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Storker]

If you start thinking about all the night predators and zombies corpses....

I think about the night predators all the time. As in "how cool it would've been to see one"


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Typos are a feature, not a bug

 

[Bob DBF]

well you could argue that no c-card is ever necessary. look at how many people on SB started diving without being certified.
the training is what gets you a c-card. and I'm a BIG fan of training. So do you need training to night dive (or anything)? Maybe not but it sure helps.

Don't confuse training and c-cards, you can have one without the other.

I was one of those that dove for years before being certified, including dives which are now considered tech, it does not mean I was not trained. And, by the way, there were no AOW or specialties cards at the time, that came with the Agencies.

Why an AOW cert, which does not require a night dive, is relevant to make a night dive makes no sense to me unless you are hiring a DM and the dive is deeper than 60'. If you could let me know the reasoning for it, when the divers have 15-20 dives already, I'd like to hear it.

Dive certifications are only necessary when a dive op requires them, most requirements are pretty reasonable and have to do with depth and Nitrox. On a boat dives, I have only been asked to see my Nitrox card and I have to write a c-card# on the waiver, but they never asked to see the card. Lets see, I was also Boat diving, Deep diving, Night diving, Hunting, Photographing, Wreck diving, and whatever else, and all they wanted was an OW# on a waiver.



Bob
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Trained when J-valves solved the OOA problem.

 

[blinkswiler]

Night Dive not a PADI Advance requirement but included as one of the AOW dives by may instructors including myself. There can be issues different from OW. Partially based on the 'I can do anything I want' mentality only to find out, its not the same as OW too late. I had one student surface in the middle of a kelp field only to wind up impossibly tangled that took 3 of us to untangle. If it had been just a 2-some with no experience, it would have been a disaster.

There is no requirement for a night diver specialty or an AOW class dive but recommended for personal safety mostly to gauge the reaction to the differences and gain experience and comfort. Pier pressure can make many people do things they can't or shouldn't.

 

[luscioman]

Most of the dive boats around me require an AOW for a night dive. That being said most of the dive boats that I am referring to have had a lawsuit in the past. Also on almost every night dive I go on 65% of the boat is AOW students and instructors.

 

[rhwestfall]

funny, the weekend we did our OW dives for certification, the instructor let us do a night dive......

 

[hroark2112]

I guess I should start carrying my AOW card!