Exploring SSI AA vs. AOWD: Different Options for SSI Advanced Diving Education
What is SSI Advanced Diving Education?
SSI Advanced Diving Education has tailored a set of learning process from introductory to mastery for divers, so that ReefMax can introduce you to what is SSI Diver's Advanced Education course and how to choose the most suitable course for your needs among the many specialty courses through the illustrations and text in this article.
Undoubtedly, we encourage divers to persist in their enjoyment of diving and gather essential practical diving experience!
Before we start this article, we need to understand the purpose of SSI Advanced Education, that is, to continuously improve the diver's skills and gain more related skills and knowledge, so that divers can gradually accumulate more diving knowledge and skills from the introductory stage, and be able to explore more advanced dive sites. Therefore, in addition to attending the course, Fun Dive (Dive Tour) is also a very important part of improving the diving ability!
SSI AA and AOWD Options
Once you've earned your Open Water Diver (OW) certification, there are several ways to extend your dive learning journey!
- Keep Diving(FUNDIVE), the gradual accumulation of diving experience, so that the fundamentals and techniques learned as an Open Water Diver (OW) become muscle memory.
- Choose to enroll in one of SSI's advanced education programs, such as Advanced Adventure Diver (AA), or participate in one of the various specialty programs offered by SSI (which can be selected based on personal interest).
What is AA ? What is AOW?
Divers often ask me about the Advanced Diving Program, but what exactly is the Advanced Diving Program?
There are a few commonly mentioned diving courses, such as the PADI system's AOW course and Specialty course, and the SSI system's AA course, Specialty course, and AOWD award certification system.
What is the difference between AA and AOW? The PADI AOW course is the equivalent of the SSI AA course certification level. Both courses have almost the same content, including five "experiential specialty dives" to earn your license. After completing the AA course, you will be able to dive according to your specialty and explore a maximum depth limit of 30 meters.
There is no such thing as an AOW course in the SSI system, so the license is an award certification system in the SSI system.
In short, the system will automatically grant you this license as soon as you meet the qualifications! (This represents the student's diving achievements and milestones)
You are eligible for SSI's AOWD Award Certification (which is automatically determined by the system) if you meet the following two criteria:
- Four independent specialty certifications
- 24 actual dives recorded
AA Course Specific Curriculum
In SSI's AA course or PADI's AOW course, the five required "specialty dives" are actually five different specialty dives chosen from the many specialties listed in the chart above, to be tried and experienced once. Usually it includes the following items:
- Experience Deep Diving (Required)
- Experience Navigator (Required)
- Experience Perfect Neutral Buoyancy (Optional)
- Experience Boat Diving (optional)
- Experience Night Diving (optional)
Each of these five dives is an experience in a different specialty (i.e., an adventure dive done in a different way), so you will not have a great deal of in-depth knowledge of each topic of the dive upon completion of the course. If you find that you are particularly interested in one of these experiences and would like to go deeper, you can choose to take the corresponding "Specialty Course" to learn that area independently.
Of course, you can also skip this part directly and start your advanced education directly from the specialty course training path.
SSI AOWD Award Recognition
SSI's educational philosophy recognizes that the ability to dive requires constant "learning" and "practice". Looking back at the OWD program, divers learn how to control their descent and ascent, maintain neutral buoyancy, and use their flippers effectively in order to have a good dive. Of course, there are also many other diving skills.
However, the skills and experiences learned need to be practiced over and over again. Therefore, FunDive is a good way to improve your skills and experience. If you rush to advance to AOW without having good scuba skills and experience, you may get half the result with twice the effort.
For this reason, SSI's AOWD award certification includes a requirement for a "record of 24 actual dives". It may be best to advance only after you have developed good scuba skills and sufficient diving experience! Of course, if you think you have the required skills and experience, you can also take the advancement course, but you need to have at least 24 actual dives in order to be certified as an Advanced Open Water Diver.
(The AOWD Award Certification will detail the specialized courses completed.)
How do I choose a specialty program or pursue my advanced scuba education?
We use a learning schedule to help you understand the process.
Most divers attend advanced education to explore more advanced dives, such as those exceeding the OW limit of 18 meters or less.
You can directly join Advanced Adventurer ) course, after which you can scuba dive to a depth limit of 30 meters after experiencing the specialty course. However, this is just an adventure course to experience the expertise, and you may not know enough about the expertise you are experiencing. Therefore, we recommend that you skip the AA course and directly choose Independent Specialty Undertake further education. You can choose from specialties such as deep diving (recommended to be compulsory), underwater navigation (recommended to be compulsory), perfect buoyancy, night diving, boat diving, nitrox (recommended to be compulsory), etc., and advance according to your interests.
We also offer the Dive Specialty Package (2 separate Specialty) and Advanced Open Water Diver Package Course ( 4 independent specialties) for you to choose from.
Century Diver (commonly known as Breaking 100), celebrating the milestone of a diver's first achievement
SSI Specialized Programs
SSI offers many useful specialty courses, and Reef Diving will list some of the most popular ones for your reference:
Deep Diving
Boat Diving
Low visibility and night diving
Nitrox Diving
Perfect Buoyancy
Stress and Rescue
Underwater Navigation
photo and video
Drysuit
Side-mounted diving
DPV
English 
繁體中文