Advanced Open Water Diver

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Advanced Open Water Diver (AOWD) is a scuba diving certification level provided by several diver training agencies, such as PADI, SSI and UEF. The equivalent course provided by NAUI is the Advanced SCUBA Diver (historically, it previously had been known at NAUI as OW-II for "Open Water II"). The certification level is roughly equivalent the CMAS * Diver qualification and the BSAC Sport Diver qualification, although some differences occur.^[1]

The SSI Advanced Open Water program is different from most other organizations, as they require not only training but they also require diving experience. To be certified as a SSI AOWD one needs to have 4 Specialty Courses and minimum of 24 logged dives.^[2]

Contents 1 Background 2 Topics 3 Issues 4 Footnotes

[edit] Background

The AOWD is the second level qualification in the American international system, following the Open Water Diver qualification (OWD). At the OWD level divers gain basic knowledge of skills, equipment and theory to safely explore the underwater realm to a depth of about 18 meters. The AOWD focuses on refining these skills, allowing the diver to explore a broader variety of diving to a maximum of 30 meters deep. Prior to entering an AOWD course, some organizations have logged dives prerequisites. The course usually contains some mandatory dives and knowledge whilst a certain portion of the course consists of free elective topics such as drift diving or search and recovery.

The European International dive education system CMAS recognises only three main levels of dive education indicated by a one star, two star, or three star system. One star indicates an ability to dive, two star indicates additional skill of rescuing divers, and three star indicates the additional skill in leading a group of divers.

[edit] Topics

The course usually covers most of the following topics:

• Deep diving (Usually at a maximum depth of 30 meters)
• Drift diving
• Search and Recovery (Search and recovery of objects)
• Underwater navigation
• Enriched air diving
• Multilevel diving
• Altitude diving
• Marine Biology
• Night diving
• Buoyancy Control

In many training agencies, these dives represent introductory knowledge and skills that may be further refined in a speciality course.

In the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver Course, the student must do two mandatory training dives relating to deep diving and underwater navigation, and then must do three further dives from a list of approximately 18 possible specialities.^[3]

[edit] Issues

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The name of this specific training level has been a topic of controversy within the diving community for many years^[4]. The crux of this debate is in the interpretation of the word Advanced in its title, and what is its proper application or use of this adjective.

One school of thought on the matter defends the use of the word Advanced, explaining that it is describing the training accurately as being more comprehensive (eg, more advanced) than the basic entry level training.

The opposing school of thought is that the use of the word Advanced is essentially deceptive marketing, as graduates of the class very commonly then refer to themselves as Advanced Divers (and/or AOW Divers), even though the training standard are not sufficient to raise a recreational diver (particularly the novice diver that the class is very frequently marketed to), to traditional expectations of holistic dive mastery, including the military defintion^[5], which is relevant because civilian dive training and standards essentially originated from the US Navy, and the diving community continues to equate 'advanced' with 'expert'. As such, while it is agreed that the training is indeed more than basic, it is insufficient to create an Advanced (eg, an Expert) Diver.

Another factor that relates to this controversy is that NAUI had previously not used the training title of Advance Scuba Diver, but instead used the term Open Water II, since they already had an existing Advanced training class (known today as Master Diver). NAUI reportedly changed their training name because of customer confusion^[6], but that was likely a euphanism that they were losing market share to the significantly easier-to-qualify-for AOW class that was being offered and marketed by another Dive Agency.

[edit] Footnotes

Looking at the PADI curriculum (as described in the PADI Instructor Manual), a few things become obvious regarding the "Advanced" cource:

1. During entry level training (Open Water, not Scuba Diver), the scuba diver is trained in taking care of himself in normal (maintain bouyancy, respond to hand signals, keep within table limits etc) and "should be expected" types of emergency situations (like equipment malfunction, running out of air, leaky mask, lost regulator).

2. During AOW training, the student is trained to perform tasks non-essential to primary scuba diving, like diving from a boat, taking pictures, search and rescue, dry suit diving, altitude diving, peak performance bouyancy, deeper diving, night diving, drift diving, underwater navigation.

Therefore, the AOW training promotes ADVANCING the scuba diver's skills, but the training is not really "Advanced", mainly because while the scuba diver is introduced to skills required for solving specific tasks, there are really no parts of the curriculum that focuses on really advanced skills, like rescue diving and leading divers. Furthermore, there is no real stress training.

In addition, different "Advanced" divers will have different "advanced" skills. According to the PADI instructor manual, there are two core dives that they all must have: The deep dive (30 meters) and navigational dive. The remaining 3 dives can be choosen from any of a high number of optional dives. A diver choosing "Dry Suit", "Peak Performance Bouyancy" and "Search and Rescue" will have a fundamentally different skills sets from one choosing "Project Aware", "Boat diver" and "Underwater Photography".

"SCUBA SKILLS ADVANCEMENT" is in fact a much more descriptive title than "ADVANCED OPEN WATER DIVER", because the students really aren't that advanced and their learnt skills will vary greatly. "Advanced" is syntactically correct only after completing appropriate "RESCUE DIVER" training where complexity, advanced procedures, judgement and stress mastering is part of the training and the curriculum is much more fixed.