I,m new to diving and am very pleased with PADI , why all thi Anti PADI sentement here ? Mike S are you with PADI as well ? Have I trained with the worng organisation ?
I only got qualified this year & posts like this are really starting to worry me . Should I stop diving for now so I can get someone else to train me ?
I only got qualified this year & posts like this are really starting to worry me . Should I stop diving for now so I can get someone else to train me ?
), but that's about it. They took 40 (that's 33% for those keeping score) of those divers and gave them the oportunity to do the interview and in-water skills test. The interview was pretty straight forward - questions like, "What is the aquarium's mission and how do you think that you can contribute to it?", "Why do you want to volunteer?", etc. The in-water skills test included being able to swim, use a snorkle, doff and don your gear (including mask) underwater, get in and out of the water in your gear, an underwater motor skills (pegboard) test, a bouyancy test, and a jungle-gym swim through - nothing that an OW diver with a few post training dives shouldn't be able to do. They took the top 20 (50% of the qualified written test takers - 17% of the original total) and plugged them into the program. Just as an FYI, all NAIB volunteer slots require an interview, training and post training tests - they have about 800 volunteers there volunteering in over 70 different jobs who contribute over 92,000 hours per year (yeah, I looked that up in the volunteer manual). Once you have finished your training, you really are treated just like staff. I mentioned what I perceive to be the benefits in my first post on this topic. My only regret is that I don't have more free time to volunteer there. 
