ScubaBrucie

Every qualification in life is valued on how difficult it is to get. By the time a doctor actually practices they have eight to ten years of training, so they can command a high remuneration.

By contrast you can become a diving instructor from zero in less than two months of training time. So it is nothing special. Really it is just semi-skilled manual labour.

If you actually want to make money from instruction you need to find an angle. Own the dive shop. Train difficult things like trimix. Become a total watersports expert and work a cruise liner. And so on.

Being able to teach scuba, on it’s own, is a simple skill that attracts no financial premium. In fact, because so many young people are prepared to do it for the life style, it attracts a financial penalty. Research this fully before you do it.

So you want to be an instructor?

Firstly, there is a lot of difference between being a good diver and a good instructor. It is perfectly possible to be one and not the other.

Second, it is ridiculously easy to become an instructor. From a standing start it takes just six(ish) weeks of training over six months, and a total of 100 dives. It really is nothing special.

Then, in the PADI system of continuing education, you hit a brick wall too early at Master Scuba Diver, so if you want more training you have to “Go Pro”. BSAC, for instance, has a non-teaching grade at Dive Leader, which is the equivalent of Divemaster, then they have two non-teaching grades above that: Advanced and First Class Diver.

It takes perhaps two years of work after Advanced to get First Class. GUE is now providing what PADI doesn’t, which is non-teaching continuing education at a high level.

Then you wonder about training agency quality control. There is the ongoing saga of certain overseas divers coming to the Philippines who are obviously undertrained and who drop on the reef and trash it. I have personally been buddied with a Divemaster (less than 100 dives, trained in a Thai qualification factory) on a Red Sea liveaboard who cycle kicked, dived with her hands, lunched her air, had iffy buoyancy and was nervous of diving.

On my IE you could see the difference between candidates from the top schools and the rest.

Yes it is good to have OWSI, even if you don’t teach. There are plenty who do this. You just get treated completely differently when you travel and dive round the world.

Sell yourself a living

That said, it is perfectly possible to make it pay. Take a look at Terry and Tracy’s web site at tntdiventures.com. Here’s one way to do it:

Thailand can be incredibly cheap if you ‘go native’. If you can do without aircon, alcohol and king prawns life becomes a lot cheaper. A very useful qualification to have before you go is Teaching English As A Foreign Language, possibly with the TOEFL system.

People all over the world want to learn English and you can teach it in the evening when you are not diving. Also teaching is teaching, so it will help you learn to be a better dive instructor.

A very important part of being a dive professional is salesmanship — getting people to buy kit, courses and dive trips. If they don’t you have little or no income. The more they buy, the more income you have.

It may be worth your while getting some sales experience before you go. Maybe a Saturday job in UK retail and some book study.

Another thing that is good is to make yourself more employable. Get lots of PADI specialities so your employer can offer them to the public. Learn to service regulators; it is not rocket science and you can do it in the UK before you go.

Learn to blend Nitrox and if there is any tech around, Trimix as well. Once again, learn here before you go. Being able to drive a boat is also a good skill. In Asia this is done by the locals but in many places this is done by the dive school staff.

Also you’ll need to concentrate on networking. Like many trades, dive instructing is a village. Get to know your fellow diving professionals and get a reputation with them for being a good, hard working member of the team who doesn’t cause trouble. Then, when the good jobs come up, your reputation will travel ahead of you. Starting with your IDC, you need to win friends and influence people! (Incidentally, you don’t have to get wet to do this — you can start building your reputation right on this site by contributing comments, tips, help and intelligent questions.)

The problem with teaching diving is that it is usually very badly paid, so often it is just a lifestyle thing rather than a serious career. You can earn more if you can teach more than just the basic PADI courses. DSAT, DAN, EFR, IANTD, TDI and GUE instructors can earn more because there are far less of them to go round. GUE in particular only have about 40 instructors worldwide for courses that are much in demand and a soon-to-be-introduced open water course will further increase demand. It isn’t easy to be a GUE instructor, though…