🧜‍♂️Scuba Diving Instructor Ranks Scuba Specialty Classes...

I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of specialty scuba courses. The term itself is a misnomer because the idea that you can become a specialist, i.e. highly skilled in any particular sub-discipline of scuba diving with the two or four dives that it takes to complete a specialty certification is kind of misleading. That being said, there are some specialty classes that are worth their weight in gold and are absolutely necessary if you want to partake in certain styles of scuba diving. This Mouthpiece Monday, I'm going to be separating the good from the bad, from the just plain ugly when it comes to scuba specialty certifications. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Divers Ready. How's everybody doing? How was your weekend? We are back with yet another Mouthpiece Monday and it is so good to see all of your smiling faces. My name's James. If you're new to this channel, consider to hit that subscribe button and click the little bell icon because on this channel, I use my expertise as a professional scuba instructor to help make you a better diver. Ladies and gentlemen, specialty classes. In case you're a newly certified scuba diver, welcome to our channel. Let me go over what I mean by specialty classes or what the industry in general deems as a specialty class. You have your diver progression chart and I've talked about this in other videos. I'll link it up above there somewhere. Every recognized training agency out there has their own version thereof. There's a linear progression from open water or entry level diver to advanced or adventure or the second level of diving. Then normally there's a rescue course followed by a dive master or a master diver. Then you get into the instructor certifications and above. That's all well and good and that presents the core progression of your diving skills. Now off to the sides of these charts, you're going to see boxes that are filled with wondrous titles like wreck diver and night diver and limited vision diver and this diver and that diver and so on and so forth. These are what we term specialty classes, special interests, special equipment, special conditions, anything other than the bog standard dive setup and conditions that you're used to as an open water diver. Now as a beginner diver, you're probably looking at that list of courses and thinking, wow, there's so much to learn and some of these titles sound really fun and awesome and I can't wait to get stuck in and tick all these off my list. That's all well and good and fine. If you want to do that, by all means. I would never stop you from wanting to learn anything you want to learn, but my word of caution here is not all of these certifications carry equal value. I like to classify specialty classes into one of three categories and before I get into what those categories are, I want to give you the assessment criteria first. So I ask myself three questions about any specialty class and that will tell me which box that class belongs into. So assessment question number one is, will I ever be asked to show this particular specialty card? In other words, if I'm booked to go out on a dive with a dive operator, are they going to require me to carry this specialty certification before they allow me on the dive? Question number two is, will this specialty certification grant me access to future study? In other words, is it a stepping stone to help me achieve my goals or is it just a means to an end? And then the third question I ask myself when considering the value of a specialty class is, are the skills that are taught in the specialty class something that I can learn informally from someone who just has expertise in the area or do I absolutely need to pay money to a training agency to receive formal training? So remember those three questions because at the end I'm going to go through a few examples of specialty courses and how I classify them using those questions. So once I've got the answer to those three questions, I can put any specialty class into one of three boxes. Here are my three boxes. Some specialty classes are absolute BS, a complete waste of your time and money. Some specialty classes are just so badly written and just a mess of information that really doesn't form any kind of structured learning added to the fact that they usually contain skills and abilities that you should have learned through your open water course anyway. But of course, agencies make less money if you don't buy specialty courses off to the side to learn things that are going to make you a complete diver that the open water course should have taught you. The BS class is no dive shop will ever ask for proof of certification for any of those specialties. There is no need to give any more of your money to a scuba diving training agency if you seek improvement in any of these skill areas after your certification. If you want to be a hobbyist scuba diving specialty card collector, and there are people out there that do that, I have nothing against you. Go out there and have fun. What I'm saying is just know that those classes, you're doing it for that little piece of plastic. You're not doing it for any great advancement in skills. Now, have I taught any of these specialties that I rank as BS? Absolutely, I have. I've worked for commercial touristy dive centers where the boss says, James, go and teach a blah, blah, blah specialty course. Yes, boss. And I did my best to put as much value into those courses as possible. But at the end of the day, I couldn't help but feel that that person could have just hired me as a private guide and said, hey, James, like I'd really like to work on my photography. I'd really like to work on my buoyancy. And I'd be like, yeah, sure, no worries. I didn't need to issue them a specialty certification to give that student the skill improvement they were looking for. So the second group of specialty classes I classify as add-ons. These classes expand your dive skills into areas that might not have been covered in your open water course. The add-on courses are typically environmental or equipment-based courses that are the kind of like nice to have add-on courses, but they don't really lead anywhere. They're a means to an end. Will you ever be asked to show an add-on specialty certification card? Sometimes, sometimes not. And then my last classification of specialty certifications are what I call essential access courses. These are vital specialty courses if you intend to partake in these particular styles of diving. You will absolutely be asked for proof of certification if you intend to use any of these specialty skills when diving with a commercial dive operator. And absolutely 100% of all the information in all of these specialty classes will be completely new to you if you've finished your open water course. And some of them even require you to be an advanced open water diver before you can start this particular specialty. All of these courses are justified in requiring formal training and certification in order to keep you safe. And if you have a dive goal in mind, chances are you're going to need some of these certifications as a stepping stone to advance your diving. And most of the essential access specialty classes feature as a prerequisite for future courses. In other words, you need to have this course if you want to progress to such and such level. Now, at the end of this video, I'm going to put up a chart that shows the most common specialty classes that are taught across the majority of dive training agencies separated into either BS, add-ons, or essential access classes. Love to know in the comments below what you think about that. And let me just say, I'm not questioning the skill of any instructor to be able to teach these classes well. All right? That's not what this video is about. Any good instructor can make any of these specialty classes well worth your time and money. My point here is you don't need to do a specialty class as a diver in some of these subjects. You could just ask your dive guide, ask your dive leader, and get the information without having to pay money to a training agency and receive a little piece of plastic card for some of the courses. So let's have a look at a few examples. Let's kick it off with a BS. Buoyancy specialties. Now, I can feel already I know this is going to vex some of you. In the video that I'll link up here, I described buoyancy as one of the five most important skills in scuba diving, and it absolutely is. My point is it doesn't need to be its own specialty class. If you do your open water course and your buoyancy is good, you don't need a buoyancy specialty class. It will just get better with time and experience. If you finish an open water course and your buoyancy is bad, you need to go back to your open water instructor and ask for your money back because they didn't do their job. They shouldn't have given you an open water course if you don't have control of your buoyancy. Now, is buoyancy something that can be refined and worked on with additional time with an instructor and practice? Absolutely. Will you ever be asked by any dive operator, any area in the world to show a peak performance buoyancy certification? Never. Nobody has ever had to show a buoyancy specialty certification. Now, as an independent instructor, I get emails all the time that say, hey, James, I'd love to work on my buoyancy. Great. Okay. So you and I, let's go scuba diving and we'll work on your buoyancy and we'll put you through some skills. Yes, those skills are the ones from the buoyancy course, but I don't need to sell you a course or give you a piece of plastic to show that we've done that work this day. The results will be in you having better control of your buoyancy and you're going to carry on diving and gaining more experience. Don't even get me started on boat diver. Here's another BS course for you. Underwater photographer or underwater videographer. Now, this may seem like a course that could fit into the add-ons course. It's a very popular course to do. Everyone's got a GoPro these days and they want to take awesome footage and make their Instagram lit and all that good stuff. Let me tell you why I put underwater photography in the BS specialty pile. I am a horrible underwater photographer. You know how I say all the time, oh, it's important to have goals and have something to work towards with your diving. That is my goal. My goal is to become better as a photographer. I hang out with photographers who are way better than me, picking up tips and tricks, and I'm trying to work on it, right? Yet, I am an underwater photography instructor. Why the hell would you want to learn underwater photography from me? I will not sell you that class. That is completely ridiculous. Let me tell you how that happened. When I was working at a touristic dive center, I'm not going to say which one or where it was, we had a customer come in who'd just bought a GoPro. That customer was, of course, immediately sold an underwater photography specialty class. Now, the person who was on shop duty that day didn't actually realize that we had no instructors in the pool of staff working that were actually underwater photography instructors who were qualified to issue that level of certification. What to do? Well, in case you didn't know this as an open water diver, this may terrify you, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Some agencies allow instructors to self-certify in some specialty criteria. Not the important ones, not the big ones, not the ones that I'm going to list later in the essential access section, but other than that, you can just tick a few boxes in an online form, pay your agency again more money, and voila, a couple of mouse clicks later, you are a specialty instructor. That's exactly what we did. We went online, and it was Paddy at the time, and all of a sudden, I'm a photography instructor. Me, the horrible underwater photography now, now I have to go and teach an underwater photography class. All you have to do to become a specialty instructor for most of these specialties is tick a box that says, if asked, and by the way, I've never been asked ever, can you demonstrate experience in this particular field? Well, yeah, I can demonstrate that I've taken underwater photos. I've got underwater photos all over the world. They're not very good, but I have experience, so I look up the course standards, and me and this chap head off to the boat to do $200 worth of diving for $450, and he signed the paperwork, and we went off and did a really, like, the worst dive course I think I've ever taught. Yeah. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. Yeah, but that's just you, and there's a lot of instructors out there who are both excellent instructors and excellent underwater photographers, and yes, there are, but again, if I wanted to get better, I wouldn't go to a dive center and pay to do an underwater photography specialty class. I would just find somebody who takes better photos than I do and say, hey, can I buy you a couple of dives and lunch, and maybe you teach me some tips and tricks, and we keep it informal like that. I don't need a piece of plastic that says underwater photography specialist. What? Nobody's ever going to ask to see that card. Wow, that's a mighty big camera rig you got there. You sure you're qualified to use it? Said no one on any dive boat ever, and here's the thing about that particular specialty as well. You don't even need to be an instructor. I could learn underwater photography from an open water diver. How about that? I'm a tech instructor, and I could learn underwater photography from an open water diver, not even an instructor, just a diver, somebody who takes awesome photos. I would be completely fine with that. Okay, rant over. Let's move on to some add-on courses now. I'm going to give you the example of the dry suit specialty class. Now, remember those three qualifying questions. Number one, will I ever be asked for dry suit specialty certification? In some parts of the world, yes. I know for a fact in Iceland, some of the operators that do Silfra Fisher will not let you dive without a dry suit specialty certification or proof of experience diving a dry suit, either or. Question number two, does the dry suit specialty class provide a stepping stone to future diver training? No, not really. It's kind of a dead end. There's no further courses to my knowledge that have dry suit specialty as a prerequisite, but certainly if you want to do cold water diving or ice diving and you've never done it before, then it's useful for that reason. And thirdly, is dry suit diving something I can learn informally without having to pay money to a training agency? I mean, theoretically, maybe, but as an instructor, I certainly would feel safer if everything was on the up and up and it was a formal training certification and I had paperwork and litigation. So if you decide to go out your first dry suit dive without me, hyperinflate the suit, invert and do a feet first bottle rocket to the surface, then I'm covered. I never did a dry suit specialty class, even though I'm a dry suit specialty instructor, because I grew up diving in the English Channel. I did my open water course in a dry suit. So I think you'll get where I'm going with that. Okay, so let's move on to essential access, the last category. These are the building blocks that are going to allow you to progress as a diver. My first example of a essential access course is Nitrox certification. No part of the Nitrox course is taught during your open water course. It is additional information. Now, it's a non-diving course for most agencies. You can do the whole course completely dry. It's highly theoretical, but it is absolutely essential learning if you want to progress as a diver. But let's go back to those three questions again. Will you ever be asked to show a Nitrox certification card? Yes, absolutely, if you want to dive Nitrox. Number two, is it a stepping stone to future learning? Yes, absolutely. For example, entry-level tech courses like advanced Nitrox, a basic Nitrox specialty certification is a prerequisite. And then question number three, is it knowledge that you can learn informally without an instructor and without having to pay money to a certification agency? Absolutely not. No, you need formal training in these things. You need to do a certification class. It's indismissible. So let me show you now my full list. I'll put it up over here of all the specialty certifications divided into BS, add-on, and essential access. All you've got to do is ask yourself those three questions and you're going to see why those courses have ended up under the particular columns that they have. But let me know your thoughts in the comments below. What do you think about that? It's highly controversial subjects. And again, let me just restate the enjoyment and the value that you get out of these courses is going to be largely dependent on the skill and enthusiasm of your instructor. Can I make a boat diver course worth $350? I'll bust my butt trying. And there's nothing wrong with being a car collector. If you want to go and do all of those specialty certifications, by all means, have fun. But just remember, there's no correlation between the skill of a diver and the number of certification cards that they have in their binder. And that's just my opinion. And remember, only you can decide the value of a specialty course and discuss with your instructor before you sign up, what are you hoping to gain from it? What are your diving goals? How will this help you? Don't forget to click that subscribe button and the little bell icon. And that way you'll never miss any of our awesome content. We've got so much good stuff coming to this channel. You're not going to want to miss it. This is going to be highly controversial. I know it is. So let me know in the comments below what you think about my selections there. What would you change? What do you agree with? What specialty classes have you done? And did you feel that you got value for money out of them? I'm going to put a link here to a new playlist we put on our channel that's specifically aimed at beginner divers. So if you are newly open water certified, I suggest you check that content out. And just below it, I'm going to put the playlist for all of our other Mouthpiece Mondays. That's all I've got time for this week, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining me. My name's James. This was your Divers Ready Mouthpiece Monday for this week. Dive safe. Dive often.