I’ve seen that many dive operators will require you to have an AOW card no matter how experienced (or inexperienced) you are, or if you have other specialties etc.
I enquired my local SSI shop and they said they don’t like to do this kind of thing (5 taster dives) and try to push people to full specialties instead, as you learn more. This makes a lot of sense to me, but is it a moot point if you need an AOW card anyway?
I’d like to do a night dive, dry suit specialty and a deep dive just to have my options open for future dives, but I’m not sure if I should just get an AOW and focus on practice, gear and actual dive trips instead.
I mean this in all seriousness, but are you interested in becoming a better diver? Or are you just after the card? If the former, I'd suggest UTD Essentials or GUE fundies to make you a solid diver first. Then I'd suggest getting the certs that you need to dive deeper and satisfy the boat charters. Because their standards are online, for SDI, you only need to be OW before taking deep: https://www.tdisdi.com/wp-content/u...ual/SDI Specialty Standards_10_Deep_Diver.pdf
However, SDI allows, encourages even instructors to exceed standards with sensible requirements. So does NAUI. Can't speak for all agencies, so I don't know who else does. But if you go SDI, ask for the instructor's syllabus on what they add to the course. I'd pass on any SDI instructor that doesn't add anything to minimum standards.