[seafox]

Originally Posted by nelsonone

I would choose PADI if I was looking to become an instructor in Thailand at some stage.......it is like the old VHS vs Beta argument.......despite sometimes being better systems (I like the BSAC block way myself) it is pure brute market strength that always wins out in the end....

Good luck with it ETV.....

The store I used to work for was NAUI when I first started teaching. All of the instructor's had 5-8 years experience.

8 years ago they changed over to PADI.

Just quit working for them this June as I did not like the direction that store was heading in respect to it's training procedures. The average experience of their instructors was not 1 and 1/2 years and some were just certified divers with only 100 dives under their belt, which is minimum requirement for becoming an instructor. California is one of the hardest training environments for divers and it is an accident waiting to happen as most of the instructors have not scuba diving experience let alone teaching experience. If I was ever on a boat or at the beach with one of these newbies and something happened then my butt could get sued also. Not that they could win a case against me but I would end up in the newbie instructors case and I did not need that.

I like BSAC and CMAS a lot and really enjoyed teaching NAUI but unluckily they definitely are poor step children compared to PADI, unluckily for the dive industry.