Vislor
Registered
SDI has two "advanced" certificates: Advanced Adventure Diver and Advanced Diver Development Program. Which one is considered AOW (for example, if a boat / charter is running a trip that requires "advanced" certification which one would they want?)
To me it seems Advanced Diver Development should be the "advanced" one as it actually requires some experience to get (25 dives) whereas the Adventure one does not. Additionally, the Adventure Diver is (from what I can tell in the rather lacking literature on the SDI site) a specialty and not a "rating" per se.
But if this is the case then why doesn't the Advanced Diver Development Program require deep and navigation? One reason most boats and charters seem to require the advanced rating for some trips is that they want some assurance the diver in question has experience on deeper dives (below 60 fsw). From what I can tell you could get the SDI Advanced Diver Development certificate and never have done a single deep dive (again, since I can't see the actual requirements on the SDI site maybe this isn't the case, but from what I *can* see the Advanced Diver Development only requires 25 dives and any 4 specialties, of which the only restriction seems to be that only at most 1 specialty can be a non-diving one like Nitrox.)
To me it seems Advanced Diver Development should be the "advanced" one as it actually requires some experience to get (25 dives) whereas the Adventure one does not. Additionally, the Adventure Diver is (from what I can tell in the rather lacking literature on the SDI site) a specialty and not a "rating" per se.
But if this is the case then why doesn't the Advanced Diver Development Program require deep and navigation? One reason most boats and charters seem to require the advanced rating for some trips is that they want some assurance the diver in question has experience on deeper dives (below 60 fsw). From what I can tell you could get the SDI Advanced Diver Development certificate and never have done a single deep dive (again, since I can't see the actual requirements on the SDI site maybe this isn't the case, but from what I *can* see the Advanced Diver Development only requires 25 dives and any 4 specialties, of which the only restriction seems to be that only at most 1 specialty can be a non-diving one like Nitrox.)