Which AOW Specialties?

[Penguino]

I am looking at starting my AOW in order to be more prepared for my trip to Cayman this summer and was wondering what specialties I should take? I know Nav and Deep are required, and I'd like to take Peak Performance Bouyancy but I can't decide on the others. They need to be able to be done in the DFW area (CSSP or Athens...). Any suggestions on what would be most helpful?

[ReefHound]

Add Search/Recovery and Night to round it off.

[fireflock]

Nitrox? It might depend on agency, but SSI counts it for AOW.

[fisheater]

Another vote for Night. Way cool stuff to see at night, especially in the tropics.

How about Boat? It may be "lame," but you'll likely be doing lot of boat diving on Cayman.

[Illini_Fan]

Although I did these two as part of my AOW, I think there are better options. Nav, night, deep were required for NAUI and I think all were useful.

DPV (a/k/a scooter) - a fun experience but not very practical for my type of diving

Underwater Photography -- I thought this would be more of a "how to" vs just take the camera and go take pictures of fish.

[Damselfish]

agree Search/Recovery and Night are good choices and can be done anyplace. Unless you have been diving for a long time and just need to get the card, you want dives that teach or improve common basic skills. I wouldn't do boat, boat diving is pretty easy to pick up and lots of the details depend where you are and the boat you're on anyway. If you've never dove off a boat read up on it a bit and pay attention to boat briefings and you'll be fine. I also wouldn't do something like photo, I don't think AOW is usually the place for it. If you're interested in UW photography by all means take a real UW photo class sometime from someone who's very good at it. As part of AOW good chance you will be with an instructor who is no expert at it themselves and take some snapshots, you'll have checked off one of 5 dives but you could probably have done something more useful.

I wouldn't do a Nitrox dive as one of the PADI AOW dives, they may count it but is not much point. PADI doesn't require dives for Nitrox anymore and when they did, you needed to do do 2 dives as part of the certification. Some places combined the Nitrox and AOW classes and you just did some of the AOW dives you were doing anyway on Nitrox, that made sense. But for Nitrox you want the whole class and the card so you can dive Nitrox. A Nitrox experience dive accomplishes little.

[ertechsg]

I will assume you are naui or padi just because of having to take several intro's for AOW. IF so (I may be wrong but athens is no were deep enough and not sure cssp is either even with there silo for-- deep diving) might checkin to that. This is why ST does there's in Travis at least thats what i'm told. Tom should have mentioned wreck diving has some good lessons. GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN

[mselizann]

What dive operator are you planning to go with in Cayman?

[Penguino]

Originally Posted by mselizann

What dive operator are you planning to go with in Cayman?

Not sure. We are renting a vacation house just north of Seven Mile Beach. I just got the little Lonely Planet book on Cayman from ST, but they only have sites, not operators. Suggestions? Also, shore diving suggestions (to save $$)

[Penguino]

Anyone take the bouyancy specialty? Is it worth it?