Home / SCUBA Knowledge / Why the Advanced Open Water Diver

Why the Advanced Open Water Diver?

Why you should do the Advanced Open Water Diver Brefet is a good and justified question. It is a fact that diving centres all over the world are members of training agencies such as PADI, TDI/SDI, SSI, CMAS, NAUI, BSAC etc. and have to comply with its requirements, which is the purpose of a standards-based system. Therefore your acquired brevets are valid worldwide.

To learn the necessary knowledge the courses Open Water Diver, Advanced Open Water Diver and Rescue Diver used to be a single module. After the separation of these modules it was now possible to take a diving course during your vacation time, whereby only the most necessary knowledge for the respective part is learned. Each of these courses builds on the learned knowledge of the previous course.

So the Advanced Open Water course makes sense to refine your skills.

But, makes this course sense for me?

In principle, the question arises, what do you want to achieve in diving?
If after a few dives as Open Water Diver you find out that you are not allowed to dive some dive sites because your certification as OWD is not sufficient, what then?
Maybe you would like to become a Divemaster or Instructor one day!

There are several possibilities to reach your goals. Firstly, learning something new brings joy and leads to more confidence in the equipment and underwater world. If you are interested in fish and corals you can live this interest very well with your Advanced Open Water as you are well equipped and certified for this kind of diving. Also, the colours of the meres are most beautiful in the spectrum from 10 – 20 m depth.

But what if you are interested in wreck diving, cave diving, sharks or rays… these are often deeper and are connected with several factors. For example, if you want to dive a wreck you will need to have a deep diver Certification to 40m because the way into the wreck is counting towards your maximum depth limit. But now we come to the point that you can only start the deep diver and wreck diver course with a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver Certification, as this is a prerequisite from PADI. Completely different is the system of speciality courses at TDI/SDI e.g. you can join all speciality courses as a certified Open Water Diver. So you can skip the Advanced Open Water Diver at SDI in contrast to PADI.

Summary of the most popular recreational diving courses Courses:

PADI:

• Open Water Diver (approx. 15.000 THB) minimum certification for participation: None
• Advanced Open Water Diver (approx. 13.000 THB) minimum certification for participation in the course: OWD
• Deep Diver (approx. 12.000 THB) minimum certification for participation in the special course: AOWD
• Wreck Diver (approx. 12.000 THB) minimum certification for participation in the special course: AOWD
• Nitrox (approx. 10,500 THB) minimum certification for participation in the special course: OWD
• Unit price (approx. 62,500 THB)
• Package (approx. 55,000 THB)

SDI:

• Open Water Diver (approx. 14.000 THB) minimum certification for participation: None
• Deep Diver (approx. 8.000 THB) minimum certification for participation in the special course: OWD
• Wreck Diver (approx. 9.000 THB) minimum certification for participation in the special course: OWD
• Nitrox (approx. THB 8,000) minimum certification for participation in the special course: OWD
• Unit price (approx. THB 39,000)
• Package (approx. 35,000 THB)

With these sample packages, you would cover everything you need as a recreational diver to participate in all normal recreational diving activities, you can, of course, switch to technical diving at any time as the speciality courses Deep, Wreck or Nitrox are required for most of the technical courses.

It is also of great advantage for professional recreational diving levels to have completed some speciality courses. A Divemaster is only allowed to lead groups of divers in which he has the appropriate certification as a diver. With diving instructors, it behaves the same way. A dive instructor may only teach speciality courses in which he has the corresponding speciality course Instructor Certification. E.g. a Nitrox Instructor may teach Nitrox courses but not deep diving courses.

Conclusion:

It definitely makes sense to complete the Advanced Open Water Diver course (or equivalent). Because you will be able to participate in more recreational diving activities and enjoy our underwater world to the fullest. Just like in life you never stop learning when you dive!

---

---

---

Go up