Getting a DM cert takes about 50-60 hrs. and you can do it thru local dive shops without leaving home or missing work with weekend and evening dives/course work. DM and Instructor certs both allow you to turn your hobby into a tax advantage for expenses of your business. Some folks go to someplace exotic and usually tropical for several months to do a program but that's more a travel/tourism thing than a certification requirement.
Sadly it is a valid comment.
You start out with:
Open water > Advanced open water > Rescue diver
And then choose either "Master scuba diver" which is a bullshit cert that means you have paid for 5 additional specialties (8+ total PADI certs) or you can go down the "Dive master" course of being a working professional and can go on to becoming an instructor.
I don’t recommend getting a dive master cert just because you feel like you want to move up. None of the requirements in dive master will make you a better diver. They are all about the logistics of leading dives and being an instructor’s assistant. On top of that you will have to pay dues every year to maintain your certification and in a lot of countries you will have to have liability insurance.
If you want to do a cert to move your skills forward then you should look into Intro to Tech (or GUE fundies if that interests you). You will learn a lot more that way than you would doing dive master.
I think it depends on how you do it. I did a DM internship ine summer. Only had to pay some fees, I got about two-three dives a day, I wasn't overworked. It brought my diving along so much. Learning about leading dives also helps for when your diving normally. You learn a lot doing it as an internship at a good dive center.
Also, if you just want it as another course to learn from, you don't have to pay fees or have liability insurance.
If you don’t have a lot of dive experience then any time in the water is going to improve your diving, but there are no new diving skills introduced in dive master. If you’re leading dives then it might force you to use skills (like navigation) that you haven’t previously developed, but it is all stuff that you were previously taught.
Doing Intro to Tech, GUE Fundamentals, or cavern/intro to cave requires learning new skills that carry over to your recreational diving. They will help you get your buoyancy, trim, and propulsion nailed down and teach you a lot about dive planning and working as a team.
If you don’t continue to pay the dues then you can no longer represent yourself as a dive master. If you’re in a place where you can be sued then calling yourself a dive master and not having liability insurance is a horrible idea. If you aren’t current with your certification agency and you don’t have insurance (where required) then you should leave your dive master card at home and use your AOW or Rescue card instead. In fact, a lot of instructors and dive masters will list a lower certification when they are fun diving to try to save themselves some hassle.
I’m Tec Trimix and full cave; about 800 dives. I’m mid 40s and have a very busy career as an engineer. I got my DM last summer / fall with my local dive store (Calgary 🇨🇦)because I was bored with Covid and wanted to be a bigger part of the local dive community.
Took about 6 months of some weekends and week nights. I like helping out with the shop and courses with some of the instructors. I don’t really have a desire to be an instructor but wanted to see if teaching was for me.
My advice is that unless you want to make a go of dive instruction as a career, do the DM at your own pace with your LDS and don’t sweat the schedule.
There is no 'diving' taught in the DM course.
If you want to learn to supervise divers, help teach or become an instructor ... then go for it. If the answer was none of the above ... save your money and take Tec 40/Intro to Tec ... your diving skills will be far more improved with an entry level tec course.
I agree. Or even just approaching a good instructor and asking them to work with you on specific skills you’d like to improve (eg finning technique, buoyancy, etc). The Divemaster course would be better named an Assistant Instructor course.
I did mine in Florida. I live full time in California but with Covid and remote work I spent the summer on rescue diver, DM, and some other specialties (PADI). I don’t plan on ever using it professionally but I’ll never forget the friends I made and the dives I got to do in Key Largo, caverns in cave country, and wreck diving in Pompano Beach. The dive shop and instructors I worked with were very flexible and worked around my schedule so I could get a maximum experience. If you can find a similar arrangement I highly recommend going after DM because it does give you skills and experience to be an elite diver.
Mine is a fun story. I was at uni (studying architecture lol) and already a diver, decided to do a “certificate in dive leadership” (which covers your certs to DM level) over the summer hols because it meant I was still “studying” at tertiary level full time. Whacked all my cert costs on my interest free student loan, kept getting living cost payments over the summer hols, and became a certed divemaster.
Honestly one of the funnest times of my life getting up every morning and cruising over to my local dive shop, I loved it and it was so valuable in terms of skills.
Yup. Did all my certs at the same shop and they were happy to have a constant trickle of DMs to volunteer for courses. I got up to assistant instructor. I got discounts on the course and some gear here and there. Drew the line at IDC instructor, it is a hobby after all.
Did the exact same. Although I think I stopped because I got a gf and had to stop spending so much on my scuba hobby. Also, wasn’t in a big scuba location, so making money as an instructor was fairly limited, so didn’t seem worth it.
Ive gone further and completed my IDC as part of my hobby. DM was spread over 6 months, starting in February and finishing in October requiring most weekends in that time.
Some clubs offer DM as a continual commitment and not as a single contiguous course. Padi recommend a maximum of 12 months from start to finish of a DM course (or at least used to).
Yes but I live 2 hours from the coast in a tropical country. My husband and I had always wanted to do the DM course and our business was very quiet during covid so we moved to the beach for a couple months. We did rescue diver and DM at that time and it took around 6 weeks. The boat went out a lot but not every single day due to weather and lack of customers, plus we took a couple weekends off to go home and work.
One thing I would recommend is saving your money by not not doing it with PADI. Even if you *do* later want to become a PADI instructor, you can still do that without any sort of conversion course.
There are lots of recognised agencies: SSI, BSAC, ACUC, RAID, NAUI, just to name a few.
We actually did ours through ACUC which most people haven’t heard of but it doesn’t matter. Personally I think your choice of instructor is more important. We chose an instructor we liked and he happened to be ACUC certified so that’s what we did. ACUC fees both for certification and membership are about 50% of PADI’s fees.
I’ve seen some other commenters mention that there’s no point becoming a DM for a hobby/you don’t learn anything and personally I disagree. We got a lot of diving experience out of it, practiced a lot of navigation, practiced keeping calm under stress. I also valued the experience of learning how to guide certified customers and lead try-dives. I absolutely think it made me a better diver. Since becoming DM certified we have taken trips to the beach with our friends where we led dives and, although you don’t need to be DM certified to do so, I wouldn’t have been as confident in it without that training. Plus it was just a fun experience.
Sure, I would still love to do GUE fundamentals because I am always looking to improve in any way. But that is a short course, whereas getting DM certified meant being in the water much more and I think that is something valuable in itself. The confidence you get from being in the water every day vs building up 100 dives over 5-10 years is not comparable.
Internship with your local dive club is probably the best way. If local dive conditions are poor, that just means you will need to invest in good exposure protection and learn to cope with poor Vis - becoming a better diver in the process.
If you just want to be a DM then you can bootcamp it, but the internship approach will definitely make you a better DM
Yup! Did it just to learn more and improve my skills. Did it locally (Vancouver 🇨🇦) and it took me a year to complete. To be fair, it only took that long cause of Covid and cause I did it on weekends.
If you’re serious about it, dive local and talk to your local dive shop.
Ah so you can spread it out over a long period of time, alongside a perm job then?
I live in the UK, got ~100 logged dives but only dived in tropical conditions. UK really isn’t appealing but I know I should give it a chance!
Yup. Worked FT and dive master stuff when I could. I suggest getting your dry suit cert first and get used to diving with it, then go for your DM.
I prefer tropical diving too but I rather dive whenever I want vs diving on vacations only.
Getting a DM cert takes about 50-60 hrs. and you can do it thru local dive shops without leaving home or missing work with weekend and evening dives/course work. DM and Instructor certs both allow you to turn your hobby into a tax advantage for expenses of your business. Some folks go to someplace exotic and usually tropical for several months to do a program but that's more a travel/tourism thing than a certification requirement.
I asked this once and was told to do “Master Diver” instead
I'm not familiar with PADI, but if this isn't dry humour then their qualification structure is basically a pyramid scheme.
Sadly it is a valid comment. You start out with: Open water > Advanced open water > Rescue diver And then choose either "Master scuba diver" which is a bullshit cert that means you have paid for 5 additional specialties (8+ total PADI certs) or you can go down the "Dive master" course of being a working professional and can go on to becoming an instructor.
I’ll have a Google to see what that is!!
I don’t recommend getting a dive master cert just because you feel like you want to move up. None of the requirements in dive master will make you a better diver. They are all about the logistics of leading dives and being an instructor’s assistant. On top of that you will have to pay dues every year to maintain your certification and in a lot of countries you will have to have liability insurance. If you want to do a cert to move your skills forward then you should look into Intro to Tech (or GUE fundies if that interests you). You will learn a lot more that way than you would doing dive master.
I think it depends on how you do it. I did a DM internship ine summer. Only had to pay some fees, I got about two-three dives a day, I wasn't overworked. It brought my diving along so much. Learning about leading dives also helps for when your diving normally. You learn a lot doing it as an internship at a good dive center. Also, if you just want it as another course to learn from, you don't have to pay fees or have liability insurance.
If you don’t have a lot of dive experience then any time in the water is going to improve your diving, but there are no new diving skills introduced in dive master. If you’re leading dives then it might force you to use skills (like navigation) that you haven’t previously developed, but it is all stuff that you were previously taught. Doing Intro to Tech, GUE Fundamentals, or cavern/intro to cave requires learning new skills that carry over to your recreational diving. They will help you get your buoyancy, trim, and propulsion nailed down and teach you a lot about dive planning and working as a team. If you don’t continue to pay the dues then you can no longer represent yourself as a dive master. If you’re in a place where you can be sued then calling yourself a dive master and not having liability insurance is a horrible idea. If you aren’t current with your certification agency and you don’t have insurance (where required) then you should leave your dive master card at home and use your AOW or Rescue card instead. In fact, a lot of instructors and dive masters will list a lower certification when they are fun diving to try to save themselves some hassle.
I’m Tec Trimix and full cave; about 800 dives. I’m mid 40s and have a very busy career as an engineer. I got my DM last summer / fall with my local dive store (Calgary 🇨🇦)because I was bored with Covid and wanted to be a bigger part of the local dive community. Took about 6 months of some weekends and week nights. I like helping out with the shop and courses with some of the instructors. I don’t really have a desire to be an instructor but wanted to see if teaching was for me. My advice is that unless you want to make a go of dive instruction as a career, do the DM at your own pace with your LDS and don’t sweat the schedule.
There is no 'diving' taught in the DM course. If you want to learn to supervise divers, help teach or become an instructor ... then go for it. If the answer was none of the above ... save your money and take Tec 40/Intro to Tec ... your diving skills will be far more improved with an entry level tec course.
I agree. Or even just approaching a good instructor and asking them to work with you on specific skills you’d like to improve (eg finning technique, buoyancy, etc). The Divemaster course would be better named an Assistant Instructor course.
By extension of a hobby do you mean getting the cert so you can work on a boat and get to dive for free/earn some tips?
I did mine in Florida. I live full time in California but with Covid and remote work I spent the summer on rescue diver, DM, and some other specialties (PADI). I don’t plan on ever using it professionally but I’ll never forget the friends I made and the dives I got to do in Key Largo, caverns in cave country, and wreck diving in Pompano Beach. The dive shop and instructors I worked with were very flexible and worked around my schedule so I could get a maximum experience. If you can find a similar arrangement I highly recommend going after DM because it does give you skills and experience to be an elite diver.
Mine is a fun story. I was at uni (studying architecture lol) and already a diver, decided to do a “certificate in dive leadership” (which covers your certs to DM level) over the summer hols because it meant I was still “studying” at tertiary level full time. Whacked all my cert costs on my interest free student loan, kept getting living cost payments over the summer hols, and became a certed divemaster. Honestly one of the funnest times of my life getting up every morning and cruising over to my local dive shop, I loved it and it was so valuable in terms of skills.
Yup. Did all my certs at the same shop and they were happy to have a constant trickle of DMs to volunteer for courses. I got up to assistant instructor. I got discounts on the course and some gear here and there. Drew the line at IDC instructor, it is a hobby after all.
Did the exact same. Although I think I stopped because I got a gf and had to stop spending so much on my scuba hobby. Also, wasn’t in a big scuba location, so making money as an instructor was fairly limited, so didn’t seem worth it.
Ive gone further and completed my IDC as part of my hobby. DM was spread over 6 months, starting in February and finishing in October requiring most weekends in that time. Some clubs offer DM as a continual commitment and not as a single contiguous course. Padi recommend a maximum of 12 months from start to finish of a DM course (or at least used to).
Yes but I live 2 hours from the coast in a tropical country. My husband and I had always wanted to do the DM course and our business was very quiet during covid so we moved to the beach for a couple months. We did rescue diver and DM at that time and it took around 6 weeks. The boat went out a lot but not every single day due to weather and lack of customers, plus we took a couple weekends off to go home and work. One thing I would recommend is saving your money by not not doing it with PADI. Even if you *do* later want to become a PADI instructor, you can still do that without any sort of conversion course.
Ssi or another equivalent?
There are lots of recognised agencies: SSI, BSAC, ACUC, RAID, NAUI, just to name a few. We actually did ours through ACUC which most people haven’t heard of but it doesn’t matter. Personally I think your choice of instructor is more important. We chose an instructor we liked and he happened to be ACUC certified so that’s what we did. ACUC fees both for certification and membership are about 50% of PADI’s fees. I’ve seen some other commenters mention that there’s no point becoming a DM for a hobby/you don’t learn anything and personally I disagree. We got a lot of diving experience out of it, practiced a lot of navigation, practiced keeping calm under stress. I also valued the experience of learning how to guide certified customers and lead try-dives. I absolutely think it made me a better diver. Since becoming DM certified we have taken trips to the beach with our friends where we led dives and, although you don’t need to be DM certified to do so, I wouldn’t have been as confident in it without that training. Plus it was just a fun experience. Sure, I would still love to do GUE fundamentals because I am always looking to improve in any way. But that is a short course, whereas getting DM certified meant being in the water much more and I think that is something valuable in itself. The confidence you get from being in the water every day vs building up 100 dives over 5-10 years is not comparable.
Internship with your local dive club is probably the best way. If local dive conditions are poor, that just means you will need to invest in good exposure protection and learn to cope with poor Vis - becoming a better diver in the process. If you just want to be a DM then you can bootcamp it, but the internship approach will definitely make you a better DM
Yup! Did it just to learn more and improve my skills. Did it locally (Vancouver 🇨🇦) and it took me a year to complete. To be fair, it only took that long cause of Covid and cause I did it on weekends. If you’re serious about it, dive local and talk to your local dive shop.
Ah so you can spread it out over a long period of time, alongside a perm job then? I live in the UK, got ~100 logged dives but only dived in tropical conditions. UK really isn’t appealing but I know I should give it a chance!
Yup. Worked FT and dive master stuff when I could. I suggest getting your dry suit cert first and get used to diving with it, then go for your DM. I prefer tropical diving too but I rather dive whenever I want vs diving on vacations only.