This course is NOT a course in advanced diving opposite to what the name seems to suggest. It is still very much a beginners course but with some more elements added to the dives. Overall you can say that the Open Water course focuses on teaching the skills and basics of diving and this course is more about the experience of the dive.

Course structure and elective dives

The course is very differently structured compared to the Open Water course. The training is done during 5 Adventure Dives. 2 dives are compulsory – the Deep Dive and the Navigation Dive. The student then gets to choose 3 dives from a number of different dives. Options include:

• Underwater digital photography
• Boat diving
• Peak performance buoyancy
• Multilevel and computer diving
• Wreck diving
• Night diving
• Diving with underwater scooters
• Underwater Naturalist
• Project Aware
• Dry suit dive
• Search and recovery
• Nitrox
• Videography

A diver who has done 3 adventure dives can get certified as an Adventure Diver (which means absolutely nothing – a total waste of money). Upon completion of 5 adventure dives you get certified as an Advanced Open Water Diver and you are allowed to dive down to 30 meters.

Theory for PADI Advanced Open Water Diver

There is no written test for the AOW. Prior to each dive you read the chapter in the manual, complete the knowledge review and your instructor will go through the results and fill in any gaps you may have. That’s it. Often, unfortunately, this is sloppily done and the theoretical part is more of an excersise in order to not violate PADI standards. I think this is one of the major weaknesses of this course but more about that later.

Pool training

There is no pool training for AOW – everything is done in open water.

The Adventure Dives

So – the core of the course is the actual diving. This is not necessarily bad and correctly executed it will be a very good course in spite of the really weak theoretical requirements. The deep dive actually takes you down to about 30 meters and you get to do some pretty good skills that illustrates the problems with diving deeper.

The navigation dive can be good but is often very much a waste of time – it depends a lot on your instructor. Many students go through this without actually understanding why the should swim in a square or along a line. I think this is important but often this dive is simply ticked off in order to meet certification requirements. Not good.

Then we have the elective dives and here the quality varies greatly. The right instructor can make any dive very good but here you often see the lack of experience in instructors. I think that the general problem with AOW is that it is required much more experience from the instructors side than the OW. It is surprising how little some instructors know about decompression theory, marine life or history of the wrecks they are diving. Also – the PADI standards for these dives are ludicrously basic – for the wreck dive for example it is enough to simply swim around a wreck. What kind of development is that?

A good instructor and careful choice of the dives can make an excellent course. I like the triple Night diving, Multilevel diving and Peak Performance Buoyancy for example. If you live in colder countries Dry Suit is good. With a good instructor Naturalist can be excellent but it can be incredibly bad with the wrong one. Avoid Boat diving, Project Aware at any cost.

Conclusion

This is very much a hit and miss. I think new divers should do this course and it gives much more flexibility when going on dive trips. But beware – it is often taught by inexperienced instructors who are unable to do anything but carrying out the PADI standards which are way too lenient. You can pass through this course without actually learning anything and this is scary – I think that it is a big responsibility to dive to 30 metres and many people who are certified are not capable of doing this safely.

I disagree with the lack of a written test and I think it is done like this so it will be easier to sell. Perhaps this course should be more compared to “diving with a coach”. My conclusion is that most rookie instructors are unable to do a good AOW course – it takes lots of experience to be able to flesh out the poor standards and the course is often adapted to suit logistics rather than the students own needs.

So – do the course, but beware. Talk to your instructor beforehand and try to figure out if he or she actually knows anything about the topic they are teaching. Sounds scary? Welcome to the Scuba Diving Industry where you can go from total beginner to high ranking PADI Instructor in 8 months…

The most common course for all new divers is the PADI Open Water Diver. It is designed to teach divers to independently dive to a maximum depth of 18 metres. No previous experience is needed and most normally fit people will be able to meet the prerequisites as long as one is able to swim 200 metres.

Theory

The course has a relatively comprehensive section on basic dive theory. The material is as with most PADI material well written and most unnecessary information has been taken off the curriculum. Each chapter finishes with a knowledge review and the course finishes with a theoretical test of 50 questions. Passing score is 75% and here is one of the weaknesses of the course – it is simply too easy. Any normally gifted person will pass this test and it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to ask a little bit more of divers to be.

Pool training

The course contains 5 pool sessions or confined water sessions as PADI calls them. They are well thought out and focus on teaching a diver basic scuba skills. Often these sessions are bundled together to save time and I think that it is a common problem that students are passed a little bit too easily. The goal is that the student should master the skills and if that is achieved all is good. Not many unnecessary skills are included and the sequencing is relevant. After finishing all confined sessions the student will be pretty well off in the open water.

The Open Water Dives

The course includes 4 open water dives. The first two to max 12 metres and the last two to max 18 metres. While the thought of these dives is good I that it is too few to create a good diver. Here it is also very common to let students to the skills to quickly and dive to 6 metres for 20 minutes simply to meet the PADI standards. While this may be ok from a standards point of view it certainly does not help the students much. I think that a total bottom time for all Open Water dives of perhaps minimum 120 minutes would have been a good idea. That would ensure that the students get enough bottom time – something which is very crucial while learning.

Other reflections

Anyone doing this course should be aware that one is not a fully trained diver after completing it. Major bits concerning self rescue and general rescue diving are missing and the requirements are simply to lenient to create a really independent diver. That said – it is a good introduction and many people can become surprisingly good after only four dives. I strongly recommend doing 4-6 pleasure dives after attempting any other course simply to build more waterman-ship. PADI encourages students to go on and to the Advanced Open Water Diver course straight after but I personally think some more dives are more beneficial.

Overall impression

This is probably the best beginners course in the industry. The planning and the material is of high quality. The negative sides includes that the students are targeted with repeated selling which can be annoying. Many courses are also over commercialised which means that the standards are followed only to allow a student to get certified and it also means that the quality of the training is somewhat lost – more information about this can be found in my beginners guide to Scuba Diving. But all things said – PADI leads the way in diver training and with a bit of caution this is an excellent introduction to scuba diving.

PADI, NAUI, CMAS, BSAC, SDI, GUE

These are all acronyms for different organizations who set standards for dive training. There are numerous ones but the biggest on, by far, is PADI (professional association of dive instructors). There is a great variance between countries though – NAUI are big in the US and in Germany an organization called Barracuda is popular (Barracuda is really a derivative of CMAS).

Usually the difference between the organizations is very much in the details and doesn’t matter much to the beginner. There is one thing, however that the beginner should think about. Many PADI or NAUI schools are commercial companies and their main goal is to make a profit out of the courses which is not necessarily a bad thing. That can also mean that you get a very professional instructor but you will have to be prepared for some rather indiscreet selling during the course. CMAS courses on the other hand are often run by clubs etc which can also be a great thing but here you have a high chance of getting a relatively amateurish instructor. So – there are really pros and cons with both options. PADI course are in general much quicker than CMAS courses which suits some individuals while some need more time and then CMAS is a better option.

The instructor matters

The organization is relatively irrelevant for dive training – what really matters is the instructor. A good instructor means all the difference and here it pays to watch out a bit. There are plenty of people working as dive instructors who have pretty shady backgrounds, particularly in places like Thailand so it pays to meet the instructor beforehand.

PADI has a list of expelled dive centres and instructors here. It takes a lot to be kicked out of PADI so avoid these guys at any cost.

Here is a list of expelled PADI members and here is one of expelled dive centres.

Quality management is also one of the weak points of these organizations so trust your instinct when meeting your instructor. Just because they are active within a large organization doesn’t necessarily mean that the are reliable individuals.

This may be cynical and of course most instructors are good but I have met plenty of rather odd individuals during my years in the dive industry.

Tropical or cold water training

It is a common belief among divers in the north that training in cold waters makes you a much better diver but here I strongly disagree. Learning to dive in Sweden will certainly teach you to endure diving in bad conditions which is good but you will spend so much time simply surviving so you wont have much focus on skills such as buoyancy. People who learn in tropical waters will in general be more comfortable divers which is the big advantage here. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you are trained to dive in conditions which are similar to those you experience during the training. If you learn to dive in water which has a temperature of 28 degrees you are simply not qualified for diving in 2 degrees.

Choose training for the type of diving you think you will do. You can always add training later if you change environment.

You get what you pay for

This is probably the most important point in this article. Don’t buy the cheapest of the cheap. Diving is serious stuff and you should not take shortcuts. If the course is cheap it may mean that the equipment is not up to date, that you need to buy certain things on top of the course price or that the instructor is underpaid which means that they have little or no experience (since no person works for free for a very long time). Buy quality.

Equipment

Buy carefully. You will be targeted to buy all sorts of things and while it is true that it is easier to dive a lot if you have your own equipment it is not necessary for everyone. I suggest buying things in this order

1. Mask
2. Dive computer – don’t rely on dive centres depth gauges. A computer is not expensive and will give you full control of your diving
3. Fins
4. Regulator
5. Buoyancy system – think about if you want a BCD or a backplate and a harness
6. Other

Buy basic, good quality equipment and make sure that you don’t buy things you may need to replace later on. Buy right the first time – it is much cheaper. Here I think that GUE got it right – you can read more in their manuals.

Dive straight after the course

Make sure that you do 6-10 dives shortly after the course. That is how you will really learn. Include this in you initial plan. Time in the water is very important for new divers and if you don’t dive after completing your course you will not become a good diver.

These are some of the aspects to consider when learning to dive – there are more and I will continue to add summaries of courses etc here on independent scuba. Do you have any good or bad experiences from your dive training? Post them at Independent Scuba!

Read also

Review – PADI Open Water Diver

Are CMAS divers better than PADI divers? Are divers trained in Thailand worse than those to learnt to dive in ice cold waters in Scandinavia?

Personally I think that most organisations are more or less the same and that the instructor is what makes the main difference. I also think that most organisations suffer from having sloppy instructors and sub-standard courses that certifies divers who really are not qualified for what their certificate says that they are capable of doing. This is a  massive problem for the dive industry. There are plenty of explanations to this and one of them is that scuba diving is simply too cheap and that consumers are not prepared to spend enough time and money getting a proper dive education.

GUE is a very interesting organisation and I think that they are the only ones who stand out and really try to do things differently. Their courses are very expensive and are not run through dive centers which means that the instructors actually get a decent salary for what they do even when the classes are small. I think this is one very important aspect because it allows the students to get a lot of attention from the instructor who does not need to stress to get the students through simply to be able to make more money. GUE is a small organisation which means that the instructors are very skilled and the standards are kept very rigidly – more so than most PADI and CMAS courses. Becoming a GUE instructor is not easy – it takes more time and dedication than in most organisation. With only one or a few exemptions the risk of getting an ex-convict or I-need-a-change-of-lifestyle 45 year old smoking overweight instructor looking for hot students is minimal.

So – high standards etc is all good but of course GUE has it’s negative sides as well. Historically I have had big issues with the elitistic thinking and with the black and white answers often presented to complex problems. Luckily this seems to have changed during the last years and there is a different humbleness which appeals much more to me.

GUE has launched its new course Recreational Diver 1 which takes a different view on initial dive training. Gone is the “Dive Today” concept from PADI. Here focus is on learning things thoroughly and properly and no attention is given to commercial aspects such as possibilities to run the course during a holiday etc and I like that. Students are taught in a way which means that they won’t have to re-learn if they want to move to more advanced diving – something I think is very common with people who start learning with PADI, CMAS or BSAC. Standard equipment includes long hose and backplate instead of the usual set-up with BCD and octopus.

I am very curious about this course and I think it will be very good. Although I like a lot about PADI this feels like a very strong alternative. It will probably never be anywhere near the same commercial success but here you get the length of a BSAC or a CMAS course combined with the professionalism of PADI and with a dose of enthusiasm added. I am convinced that it will produce excellent divers and that sub-standard performance will not result in certification, something that is very common today.

The course is designed by Jesper Berglund who has also written the course material – a massive book with the title “Beginning with the end in Mind”. I have known Jesper for  a long time and I am extremely curious to see what type of divers this course will create. We have had many long discussions about the pros and cons with low volume masks, rubber fins and long hoses and although we do not always agree there has always been a very interesting argument. I think it is great that another option to dive training has come out. One that is less commercial and one who dares to not approve people simply because they have paid the course fee. Good luck to GUE with this course!

Course standards can be found here.