Dive jobs - how to find divejobs - how to create divejobs - see your potential dive job opportunities around you and create your own jobs underwater by offering underwater services - qualification requirements for dive jobs
Many divers are looking for divejobs - of course we the find thousands of traditional divejobs
- divemaster in general
- underwater guide on islands and diveresorts
- dive guide on diveboats, underwater research / marine biology projects
- SCUBA diving instructor
- instructor for snorkeling courses
- salesperson in a diveshop or dive facility
- repair technician in a dive resort or dive facility
for such conventional / traditional divejobs you find jobs through online advertisement, job offers in SCUBA diving magazines, job offers through SCUBA instructor associations such as PADI, NAUI and others ... or as i did for my very first job - on the way to the Florida PADI College in Jacksonville in 1979 i went on a dive vacation in Mallorca - a Spanish island i the Mediterranean sea - to gain additional open water / ocean SCUBA diving experience during a 3 week dive vacation ...
from the dive resort owner i received a job offer as SCUBA diving instructor in the Republic of Maledives - to start right after my instructor college time. YES i accepted later on that job offer - but finally got a job on the neighbor island of that instructor - and stayed there for a full 2 years in a row before continuing in other dive locations around the world.
Hence before getting a dive job - you may first be a customer and excellent diver, moving up the ladder of continuing diver education and suddenly become a job offer from the dive resort you have been customer. Who else knows you and your potential and professional qualifications better than the ones who trained and taught you.
but ...
here i am talking about the many other divejob opportunities this rewarding and exciting job offers you !!
first a brief overview of the different additional divejobs i had during my many years as a professional PADI SCUBA diving instructor ( PADI MI 11580 ) until i retired from active diving and move on in life. some of the most rewarding and exciting UW divejobs i had as a self employed / freelance dive professional have been:
- light salvage
- treasure hunting
- artifact collecting
- marine biology - research projects
- UW repair work
- UW photographer
- repair technician for Viking dry suits
- repair technician for Bauer compressor
- repair technician for SCUBA equipment
- inventing and manufacturing of diving accessories in homework style
all of above jobs i did while having my own small ONE man PADI facility "Amphora Diving School" ..
hence we see
being a SCUBA diving instructor is far more than simply teaching non-divers to become divers !!
once you have decided to be a diving professional, you have a wide selection of opportunities. however - you have to SEE those opportunities yourself, you have to acquire all necessary skills and knowledge yourself, you have to invest in all additional specialized equipment and finally and most importantly ..
YOU have to OFFER such services to the broad public, you have to make your special underwater skills known to all - by:
- word of mouth advertisement / promotions by happy customers and successfully trained divers
- yellow pages - the single most expensive advertisement method - and nowadays may be soon part of history !!
- advertisement campaigns in classifieds or local newspapers
- printed flyers and brochures hand carried into mailboxes of your dive shop neighborhood
- online on your web site - modern diving professionals of course do have their own web site - its the cheapest and by far most efficient method to reach out to new customers searching for exactly your specialty UW skills and expertise !! KNOW how to optimize your professional SCUBA diving service oriented web site to make sure that whoever searches what YOU have to offer will find YOUR web site - this special skill and knowledge is called SEO - Search Engine Optimization. there are many forums to assist you once you have exceeded the beginners level of SEO skills or you may participate in a vacation SEO workshop or join an online community of web designers / web site owners - or search Google to find your solutions needed to solve your problems
to be a dive professional is a real job - a dive professional is a job as serious and as demanding as medical doctor, nurse, or any high risk job. to be a dive professional dealing with humans - your customers, dive students, divers, vacation divers, recreational divers and customers DEPEND and rely on you !! often their lives is entirely in YOUR hands. hence a diveprofessional has many options to work and find or create underwater jobs - but he NEVER has an option to fail or make mistakes.
the following diving professional related skills are required in FAR above average performance level
- quality consciousness
- reliability
- dependability
- broad knowledge and skill level of a large variety of mechanical skills
- human communications
- human relationships
- honesty in all aspects of life
- selflessness day and night - safety and wellbeing of all others above all !!
- 100% FREE of ANY addiction
- totally fit and healthy - including an excellent spiritual, emotional and mental health which in
- turn requires a happy and well balanced family / love life FREE of any problems at all - your mind and heart needs to be free for your UW job - free for the safety and concerns of your customers!!
- sincere interest to love all, to share with your customers and to serve others
- sincere desire to make others happy - to create true deepest customer satisfaction
- absolute safety consciousness in all aspects of life
- environmental awareness, environment consciousness, love FOR nature and all life forms on earth
the overall requirements on a dive professional are quiet comparable to the requirements for air craft pilots or professional bus drivers. both need top safety and reliability to bring all their customers safely home a life long. for both risk never is an option. 100% performance every minute on duty - 100 % focused on your job while off duty - there never can a a dive professional with a hang over going on a weekend dive trip or going to perform underwater rescue or salvage operations in cave, murky water or deep down in the ocean surrounded by sharks amidst strong currents up to 5-7 knots !!! 1 knot = 1,852 km/hrs
partying is what you do BEFORE being a dive professional and AFTER your retirement - but NEVER while having your dive business or dive jobs !! diving has so many rewards of different kind that a true dive professional never needs compensation - his life is filled with exciting adventures - every day of his professional work is different than any other day ever before.
Create your own dive jobs - see and recognize your potential dive job opportunities
based on above list of divejobs i had myself - i will give you practical examples on each to give you the idea how and where to look out yourself for dive job potentials in your own living / working / diving area. i will describe very briefly a few divejobs i got - you then look around and recognize your own potential around your present diving / living location.
UW search, recovery and light salvage
I successfully did such jobs as
- searching for deep sea fishing gear - lost in coastal waters by a sport fishermen while being drunk on his small vessel fishing.
- searching / recovering a mobile military own transceiver from a water ski boat operating in AFRC facility in Germany
- search and salvage of lost jewelry in open water beach environment in lakes - using UW metal detector
- recovery of lost anchors
- recovery of lost SCUBA equipment in open water
- searching and moving heavy concrete weights used to anchor the buoys used by sailing and boating clubs if they rearrange their "parking" slots in coastal waters for their yachting club members. these concrete blocks often are 500 - 1000 kg heavy and need heavy duty large UW lift bags.
Treasure hunting
during off season - or after regular diving operating hours - searching old public open water beach areas on lakes or ocean for lost coins, watches and jewelry .. i found many kilos gold, silver jewelry and coins.
Artifact collecting
the name of my PADI training facility "Amphora Diving School" came from my own amphora collection i found in my earlier years of SCUBA diving off the coast of Lebanon. other areas may have different artifacts or antiques that somehow can be used as rewarding gifts for your customers, friends or to be sold as artifacts to collectors to earn an extra income every now and then. i did all - give away for free and sell artifacts and antique treasures such as amphoras some 2000+ years old. amphora is OLD pottery used to store and transport wine, spices, grain, oil and other valuables in ships as well as at sea. a typical Roman shipwreck may have several thousands of amphoras - most may be broken - some may be still in perfect condition. even fragments may still be exciting and decorative for collectors
other artifacts of more recent time were port holes, ship compass, ship lights and other brass wreck artifacts. they all have been used as rewards and gifts for my diving students or customers - but also could have been sold to collectors. where and how to use a brass port hole ??
here a nice encounter i had in early nineties in a nightclub i visited weekly for my dancing fun - i saw on the wall a closed port hole.
Marine biology - research projects
once for almost 2 weeks I spent a camp in Yugoslavia with several of my more experienced divers - working / diving for a marine biology institute - it was fun, rewarding and an excellent team work for all bringing our diving expertise and experience into benefit for marine biology science.
UW repair work
another excellent and financially rewarding job has been UW repair. depending on where exactly you live - you may have small but repeated opportunities to perform repair or inspection jobs on commercial UW rigs or machinery at commercial rates per hour. one such fine and good paid job was to repair a damaged lake ventilation system - installed to pump huge quantities of air into a small dieing lake. zero visibility, freezing water, 1m and more light silt on the bottom ... some 3 days of many hours in a dry suit until job successfully done.
that particular job i got as a result of having done in a previous year a beach UW clean up of the public swimming / beach area of that small city. that first job with a group of divers was done just for fun and part of the UW environment awareness program ... the reward for that was a safer clean beach UW - free of dangerous objects, nails, broken glass, etc ... and a free dinner with the mayor of that small city for ALL divers involved.
several months later that mayor called me for help for his far more serious UW lake ventilation equipment problem. as you see, sometimes you first have to do some free community service to be known and called upon for commercial jobs as well.
UW photographer
besides offering UW photography courses - i also did UW photography for hotel guests in the Maledives. using my own skills, knowledge and experience as well as a complete set of professional UW camera with strobe - i offered guests the opportunity to give me their film of choice to make one roll of film UW picture just for them. the offer was valid for participating divers as well as non-divers.
for the divers of course part of the pictures taken by me always included some pictures with them. in free time and my own leisure dives - YES i did go on fun dives if i had free time as a diving professional !! i loved my job with all my heart, soul and body day and night !!!
thousands of the UW slides taken and developed - using my own E-6 processing in my own bath room - my films and offered most of my slides to guests of the hotel as souvenirs for a honest price. thus helping me to cover the expense of UW photograpy equipment and at the same time offer a unique souvenir to guests. many happily accepted such offers.
Repair technician for Viking dry suits
diving in cold fresh water - of course even active recreational divers use more and more dry suits. i loved my Viking dry suit - except for one point. what to do if you need relief and have to piss ...
being in the water for many hours - several dives or hours of UW treasure hunting or UW work ... the bladder fills again and again.
on a picture i saw heavy duty Viking dry suits having a convenience zipper. on a sports fair - may be ISPO or SCUBA equipment accessory catalog i found a supplier for reasonably priced dry suit convenience zippers of the right length - approximately 8 inches or so and of same style and quality than the regular Viking dry suit zipper.
hence i became a dry suit surgeon on my own Viking dry suit first - made a clean horizontal cut at the right height - added the convenience zipper - and enjoyed the freedom to find relief without having to move out of the entire SCUBA gear.
i had all the perfect glue and knowledge - i did already Viking hood, neck seal and wrist seal replacement in house - first for me, then a few friends then all customers, then even customers of other shops - there was at that time no other local option to do an overnight full seal replacement on a Viking dry suit. however - once you know how to do that job - including the convenience zipper - then you have created a service hitting a market niche - such a professional job easily can be done in 24 hrs max. the alternative would have been sending to the factory and wait for some 2 weeks or sending to the equipment distributor - another many days of waiting time PLUS shipping costs.
Repair technician for Bauer compressors
As a versatile dive professional of course you may be a trained and certified Compressor repair technician - i lived and worked many years just a few hundred meters away from Bauer compressor factory and went through all the training they offered. As a learned mechanic i had all the professional skills needed.
Nowadays more and more recreational divers living in potential diving areas own a small portable breathing air compressor - a new job opportunity is to provide spare parts, breathing air filters and of course a fully qualified repair and maintenance service for compressors. an additional job / income opportunity of course might be to have one or several well maintained small breathing air compressor units for rent out to certified divers.
Repair technician for SCUBA diving equipment
Offering SCUBA diving equipment - repair can actually be a professional service of its own - and may even be offerend fully independently of any diving services offered. It is a highly demanding technical job, needing specialized training and special tools, equipment and most likely you will want to obtain equipment manufacturer's certification for all major brands used in your area. you also will have to keep hundreds of different spare parts, seals, O-rings and other components on stock for all major brands and models in use. Yet such a professional service still is a low investment compared to a full service dive resort or diving facility.
Many larger dive resorts or dive facilities offer jobs just for professional repair technicians without further dive duties. such repair may include repair for wet suits, dry suits, regulators, SCUBA tanks, hydrotesting of SCUBA tanks, sand blasting and qualified painting of tanks, BCDs / BCJs, and all the accessories such as DPVs, UW photo or video equipment housing-repair and much more.
people entering a SCUBA diving equipment repair technician career ideally are fully qualified and experienced professional mechanic from any other mechanical back ground such as car mechanic, industrial mechanic, ... etc.
Inventing and manufacturing of diving accessories in homework style
depending on your divers needs - you may lack accessories on your local market - you may face particular problems and invent solutions - and produce the small quantities needed to satisfy your local customers needs. out of my own local situation during my years working in Germany - i needed buddy lines - a different style than just a simple rope tide with a bowline to each wrist - hence i "invented" a different system with velcro closure on a industrial type nylon belt - suitable for handling in cold water by dry suit divers wearing dry suit 3-finger gloves .... and produced smaller quantities for local diveshops and rescue divers, as well as for my own customers. other small useful items created and produced in homework was a special UW treasure hunter's bag - again using velcro closure - always a special brand for true wet underwater use !!! - to drop small coins or jewelry while wearing gloves UW. different system but related to it was a key bag for the car keys to safely carry the car keys while diving UW ... many small items have been useful but inexistent by that time. local made UW slates, and many other items ... all served multiple purpose
- to enhance diving comfort and diving safety and thus increasing divers fun while diving
- to meet a real need by some of the divers, customers or local diving communities
- to provide additional work and thus additional income for me during the lesser active diving months of the cold winter season
- to provide a challenge for me to be creative and productive during off season times
Another future dive job opportunity or dive "industry" is mariculture or UW farming
when looking for dive jobs - keep in mind the growing industry of mariculture - the commercial underwater farming of fish, lobster, crabs, oysters, mussels ... such divejobs offer a great opportunity to do something useful and challenging at the same time. growing and providing valuable fresh sea food for millions of people may turn more and more fishermen around the world into "sea-farmers" and may increase the need of qualified divers assisting in mariculture projects.
A good old friend of mine - with the same first name - also used very successfully venture into writing travel guides for dive locations and even more successfully into commercial UW movie / TV documentary production as a camera man.
the opportunities are manifold. you need to develop a sense of potential needs to be met by you - you need to look at all lakes, rivers, ocean coastal waters and see what service or products you as a professional diver with a wide variety of qualifications and hudreds or thousands of UW hours and dives can offer.
grow as you gain additional diving experience - the beginning may be as simple as a diving assistant or divemaster in a local dive store or dive resort to gain a few hundred hours more diving experience among hundreds of different divers from different countries ....
keep on learning and improving all your skills and knowledge - continuing education is the key to professional advancement in your UW career. invest substantial amounts of time, resources, efforts and money to become a truly and fully qualified recreational diving professional or turn your love for diving into a heavy duty commercial diving career - at least for a while, as long as you enjoy such commercial diving jobs offered by oil industry and other potential employers.
May God bless you on your path of life
hans
ex (retired) PADI MI 11580
