PADI open water max depth

[Jason Ooi]

Hi,

OW 18m/60feet diving association standard ........and policy.....
Experience divers can go deep dive is your on risk, but good diver have to continue education to next level AOW and got many speciality courses you can chose DEEP WATER DIVER if you love deep water dive....

I will say smart diver continue diving education never ending.....do your guys agree with me.
maybe I wrong......
Cheer
Jason

 

[renpirate]

Here is the terms for DAN coverage from the coverage handbook.

Covered Dive means a recreational dive or
diving while a scuba instructor, dive master,
underwater photographer, or while performing
research under the auspices and following the
diving safety guidelines of the American Academy
of Underwater Scientists (AAUS). A dive begins
upon entry into the water and ends upon exit
from the water. A Covered Dive must begin while
Insurance is in force.
Covered Diving Accident means DCI as
a result of a Covered Dive within the 130-foot
limit. For Preferred and Master Plans only, it means
DCI or any Injury as the result of a Covered Dive,
regardless of the depth.

It is always good to know your coverage. Now that being said, I agree that people should stay within the limits of their training and expereince. 130' is a fairly arbitrary number, but it is easy to go into deco at that depth if one is not careful and that is a whole new skill set.

 

[garyfotodiver]

dsd 6 meters
ow 18 meters
aowd 30 meters
dive masters and in structor 40 meters all with padi

But you are all missing the point. These are RECOMMENDATIONS, not limits. There is not a SCUBA policeman waiting to confiscate your card if you violate these depths.

I won't even begin to get into the differences between the training of today with that of, say 35 years ago. I have experience with both. I agree that there are many recently-trained divers who are unprepared for diving at any depth.

 

[dl348]

Yup, I've seen many OW divers arrested by the scuba police once they descended down to 61 ft. If you don't want to go to jail, please stay above 60 ft.

 

[wreckchick]

I don't think that anyone on the planet (including me) will tell you not to go to 61' on an OW card. I don't think that the "recommendations" apply to every diver equally. Obviously there is no scuba police. I will tell you this, the diver I fear the most is the guy (or gal, but mostly guys) that come to me with a tattered old card from the 1970s bragging about having been a diver for over 30 years that sets up gear that looks like it last saw action in the 1980s and the guy is all about his 100 dives. Break it down folks, that's less than 3 dives a year. That's the guy I'm going to have to rescue. The initial training was far more intense then than it is now, granted, but if you don't USE it and continue to learn and dive and progress, it doesn't do a lick of good out there in the big, bad ocean. It doesn't care than your instructor had you doing bounces to 250' on air just to see if you lived.

I'm not about the money grab on advanced certifications, if you can do the dive, fantastic. Show me a logbook with RECENT experience similar to what you're about to do. I'm not talking about Coz in 1997 or that Billy Deans signed the book in 1986. I want to know that you're keeping up with the industry and actually an active diver.

Oh, and if anyone ever brings a junior cert to me and wants to dive the Busch at 95', you're getting sent home.

</rant>

Rachel

 

[D1V3R]

According to PADI its 60 feet - but many people violate that every day including myself. Why is it important?

your kidding right?
you have to admit, thats a little to conservative

 

[PaulChristenson]

What's their experience? That's much more impoirtant than the card.

Walter hit it on the head...

It doesn't matter what your card states...it matters what you as a diver is capable of dealing with...

My understanding from several PADI instructors...they were saying 60 ft was a max for a CESA for most divers...

Paul in VT

 

[GrierHPharmD]

Good. Tell that to the Senior PADI instructor who took her to 70fsw on her third check-out dive. The depths you quoted are recommendations only, not Federal or State Law. There is risk in everything we do. Our job is to analyze said risk and determine whether it is acceptable or not. If I choose to take my daughter to the Sea Emperor wreck off Boca Inlet once or twice a year, that is my decision. Give me credit for some intelligence and that I have considered the risk involved.

The next time we return to the SE, I will ask the boat captain to drop us over the United Caribbean wreck, a few hundred feet from the SE. We will make a free descent onto the UC and, using the compass heading the captain provided us, navigate to the SE.

The other week, I went shopping for a new BC for the "Junior" diver, who is now 5'6" and weighs about 125# and is 15, no longer a "Jr". When I mentioned to the LDS owner, a PADI instructor, that I recently missed the chance to dive (for free!) on a wreck in 120fsw because I forgot my AOW card, she had a horrified look on her face as she informed me that AOW was not good enough to dive to 120fsw. Well, after 35 years of diving in fresh and salt water, winter and summer, warm and cold, from shores and jetties, giant striding from large boats and back-rolling from small boats, from 15 ft to 110 ft, with my own equipment and with borrowed equipment, etc, etc, etc; if I need to take two dives with an instructor to allow me to go 10 ft further, then I think I might as well stop diving and take up basket weaving.

Gary,

In the General Standards and Procedures section of the PADI Instructor's Manual, the depths of training dives are listed this way :

"2. The minimum depth for open water skill evaluations is 5 metres/15 feet.
3. The maximum depth for open water training dives must not exceed the
depth specified in individual Instructor Guides. Additionally:
a. Do not plan or conduct any training dives in excess of 40 metres/130
feet.
b. Do not plan dives or conduct dives that exceed the Recreational
Dive Planner limits or the no decompression limits of the student’s
dive computer (as outlined by the manufacturer’s instructions.)
c. Do not plan or conduct any training dives for 12-14 year old Junior
Divers in excess of 21 metres/70 feet, nor any dives for 10-11 year
old divers deeper than 12 metres/40 feet."​

That being said, taking young divers (and by young, I mean adolescents whose bones, central nervous systems and capacity for using good judgement are still developing) is a risky proposition. Like you, I've worked in a wide variety of roles in the pharmaceutical industry, including 5 years as a specialist in clinical toxicology, where the concept of calculated risk was something that we dealt with every day. And coming from that perspective, I'd advise caution in taking your daughter with you on deep dives.

I'm making a couple of assumptions here: The first is that you would never want to do anything to cause harm to your daughter. The second is that you might not be aware of the issues involving children and diving. I'd like to share a helpful article called "Why I do not train kids" from Larry "Harris" Taylor, PhD, of the Univ. of Michigan.
I hope you find it useful:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lpt/kids.htm

And here's a nice piece that Harris wrote about deep diving:
http://www.mindspring.com/~divegeek/deep.htm

Good luck and safe ascents:
-Grier

 

[mccabejc]

Anybody use Wikipedia ? It's kinda cool, it's an online encyclopedia built by the users. You can just go on and do a writeup on any subject you want. The reason I brought that up is I'm thinking it would be nice to have a section on Scubaboard where everyone inputs their 2 cents on any scuba-related subjects we can think of (such as this one), and we build a scubapedia. That frees everyone else from having to re-answer the same questions over and over (such as this one).

Anyway, absent a "Scubapedia" , here's my 2 cents:

I think the 60ft "limit" is more than just an arbitrary whim, and probably has some good rationale behind it. If you are breathing at a fairly typical 0.7 cfm SAC rate, and do a square profile dive to 60 ft, you will run out of air before you have to worry about getting into a mandatory decompression for a non-repetitive dive. That's a good thing for a new OW diver. No need to worry much about NDL time, just watch the air and you'll be fine.

Also, you can be pretty sure that with a 60ft limit, when you start to ascend your NDL time will be increasing, unlike what may occur at greater depths. Imagine a new OW diver who drops down past 100ft for a few minutes, then starts a nice slow ascent like he was told in OW class. Then he looks at the remaining NDL time on his computer and it's decreasing, and suddenly he finds himself in a decompression dive, and he's screwed because he no clue what to do.

 

[douglasville diver]

The tables nitrox or air seem to dictate max depth for me. 95ft is my deepest so far that was right after ow on 32 ean ,everything was fine but is a problem going to happen on your fifth dive or your 1500th?