Qualifications of a DM

[TMHeimer]

In the same vein as there is such a thing as a Master Diver and that is not related to Dive Master (except that all Dive Masters are Master Divers), in SSI, there is a difference between an Assistant Instructor and an Instructor Assistant.

Assistant Instructors can teach and issue certifications for Try Scuba, Scuba Skills Update, and Perfect Buoyancy and qualify as an instructor for about a dozen other specialties.

Dive Masters can serve as Instructor Assistants, which means diver-herding, increasing ratios, serving as a dive buddy, and leading no more than two OW students in the discovery portion of open water dives 3 and 4 while under the direct supervision of an open water instructor.

It would be nice if SSI (and the dive industry as a whole) had decided to use some combination of the other 200,000 words available in the English language instead of just swapping the order of dive and master or instructor and assistant.

With PADI not all DMs are Master Divers. It's not a requirement. I would surmise that more PADI DMs are not MSDs than those that are.

 

[TMHeimer]

As I mentioned much earlier in this thread, we need realistic expectations. The majority of dive-professionals these days make so little money they're effectively working for free. Diving is another one of those professions, where there are enough people who love doing it enough they'd do it for almost-free, that companies are more than will exploit that. Many things within scuba are expensive from a customer-perspective, but I'm pretty sure only the dive-agencies are sitting comfortable. I totally get why, because I've even considered the idea of being an instructor-assistant for free, given my day-job pays many times what I could ever hope to earn in SCUBA. Except, there's no chance I'm going to make someone else money off my free labor.

I think maybe something I'd like to see a little more of, which might help both those who are in it "for the love," and those who want to learn, is dive-tutoring. At minimum, no middle-man is taking a cut. Something I might do when I am more experienced though, is offer nearly-free tutoring, for just the cost of my expenses like tank-fills.

edit: Based on some brief research, it appears the "e-learning" portion of classes is approximately half the cost of many classes. The remaining half is divided between the dive-shop and the instructor(s).

I like your attitude of not wanting to work basically for free as an assistant and make money for the agency/shop. Same thing happens in music-- too many doing it for the "love of it", ruining it for the folks who would like to make a decent wage doing it.

 

[SlugLife]

You're going to need to make sure you are legally squared away with very good insurance if you want to do this. If you take anything at all in exchange for instruction, even just what you call tutoring in exchange for tank fills, you are working in a professional capacity. If you are doing this outside of the protection of a training agency or shop and without some amazing personal liability insurance, you're going to get hosed if a student so much as gets inner ear barotrauma.

I don’t know what your liability laws are where you live, but in the U.K. teaching scuba without insurance would be very foolish. Anything over expenses puts the instructor under the Diving at Work Regulations and, possibly, attracts Inland Revenue interest.
A number of commercial instructors i.e. PADI, SSI have been jailed following incidents.

Good point. Liability & insurance pretty much kills the idea. Even if someone signs a form with every possible liability protection, courts can still throw out those clauses. Even if you win the suit, you would always lose in terms of legal-costs.

During my Advanced OW class near the end, the instructor said he was pleased and pleasantly surprised that our class had ZERO incidents or medical issues. I was a little surprised by that and how often he sees incidents during and AOW class. He said "nearly every time."

I guess "helpful dive buddy" will be the limits of my tutoring other divers, given (1) I won't earn another person a profit with free labor and (2) scuba-instruction doesn't pay enough to justify me charging for my time.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I like your attitude of not wanting to work basically for free as an assistant and make money for the agency/shop. Same thing happens in music-- too many doing it for the "love of it", ruining it for the folks who would like to make a decent wage doing it.

When I started out, the shop paid $25 to get an OW student through academics and confined water. Another $25 IF they get certified. That's why many instructors will pack as many students as they can by using assistants. Otherwise, "it isn't work their time".

I was doing it to develop as an instructor.

 

[SlugLife]

I like your attitude of not wanting to work basically for free as an assistant and make money for the agency/shop. Same thing happens in music-- too many doing it for the "love of it", ruining it for the folks who would like to make a decent wage doing it.

Having worked as a professional artist, I've seen a LOT of the same thing. The people affected the most are those brand-new to the industry. Once you establish enough of a name, reputation, portfolio, etc you absolutely can overcome that problem and earn a reasonable living.

However, even if you're making good money as an artist, you'll still have people approaching you CONSTANTLY wanting you to do "just a little" work (which is a LOT of work) for little to no pay. "But you'll get publicity and fame!" I mean other than the fact that you can't pay bills with "publicity" I've also seen that such projects never result in publicity. In fact, those projects almost always result in whoever commissioned the work trying to take ALL the credit.

I work as a software engineer these days, but still do some art for myself on the side. I'd still do art for a client, but rates start at software-engineering rates.

As far as SCUBA, one of the best examples of someone breaking through that barrier is Sidemounting.com. Now, I don't know how much money he makes. However, he's got a really cool site, lots of great materials, lots of value for the money, and a great reputation. It was certainly a very large investment on his part, to record all the videos, and get the site up and running.

 

[Raphus]

Good point. Liability & insurance pretty much kills the idea. Even if someone signs a form with every possible liability protection, courts can still throw out those clauses. Even if you win the suit, you would always lose in terms of legal-costs.

During my Advanced OW class near the end, the instructor said he was pleased and pleasantly surprised that our class had ZERO incidents or medical issues. I was a little surprised by that and how often he sees incidents during and AOW class. He said "nearly every time."
.

thats shocking.. What king of incidents was he talking about?

most DM´s i know are not master scuba diver.
nitrox and deep are the only specialty, that are done until DM certification(most of the time).

But this depends on the kind of diver. if they got access to a mentor, they skip some specialtys.
But its a bit questionable to have a DM assist in a class he never took.
With a good mentor (instructor) no problem, but if you just hire a DM and he has no idea how to do the skills for the specialty he assists, then he will slow everything down.

 

[SlugLife]

thats shocking.. What king of incidents was he talking about?

most DM´s i know are not master scuba diver.
nitrox and deep are the only specialty, that are done until DM certification(most of the time).

But this depends on the kind of diver. if they got access to a mentor, they skip some specialtys.
But its a bit questionable to have a DM assist in a class he never took.
With a good mentor (instructor) no problem, but if you just hire a DM and he has no idea how to do the skills for the specialty he assists, then he will slow everything down.

This information is second-hand. I got the impression that the vast majority of these incidents were relatively minor. Things like a nose-bleed because people pinched their nose too hard, or diver unexpectedly shoots to the surface from 30ft, or diver does something demonstrating they're clearly not ready for an Advanced Open Water class.

Obviously, I'm paraphrasing and relaying information from somebody else's experiences, so naturally inaccuracies develop when playing "telephone."

There could be other factors too; local diving sites aren't exactly something to write home about, so I'd imagine there are a lot of vacation-only divers. The place I get classes from has a great reputation, but it's also possible that some of the other dive-shops locally do a poor job teaching OW, leading to AOW students being ill-prepared. Most of the other dive-shops are affiliated with a certain highly-criticized dive agency.

 

[Scraps]

There is a big difference between a) having someone with local knowledge show competent visitors around an unfamiliar neighborhood (i.e. what Kimela described), and b) delegating responsibility for one's own safety to a divemaster because one can't be troubled to acquire or maintain basic OW skills.

Situation a) is simply one method of adhering to #2 of PADI's Standard Safe Diving Practices Statement of Understanding:

Be familiar with my dive sites. If not, obtain a formal diving orientation from a knowledgeable, local source.​

I was under the impression that this thread started out as a lament about DM's who are not equal to the challenges of situation b) when they were hired to help with situation a).

 

[MichaelMc]

They might have been hired initially as critter finders and basic site navigation. But divers learned to be lazy as DMs wanting tips would do their work and watch their air. And dive ops not wanting accidents would start wanting more than critter finders in their DMs.

 

[boulderjohn]

With PADI not all DMs are Master Divers. It's not a requirement. I would surmise that more PADI DMs are not MSDs than those that are.

I am a certified PADI trimix instructor, and my stack of certification cards is approximately 2 inches high.

I do not qualify as a PADI Master Diver.