Becoming a Dive Instructor

I grew up in South Florida and have been illegally buddy-diving with my parents in the Keys since I was 4 or 5 years old. I’ve had my Open Water Diving Certificate since 2 days after my 12th birthday (the age you have to be to go beyond 40 feet deep) and I just recently contacted PADI to get a replacement card since to be honest, my parent’s divorce took a toll on my diving opportunities and I haven’t been out with a scuba tank since I was about 16.

So, let me just say that I am super interested in the idea of being a scuba diving instructor, especially if it will fund my trip around the world. If there’s one dream job I’ve fantasized about the most consistently, it’s being some kind of treasure diver, or having a scuba diving job that involves cleaning up our oceans or mapping the bottom of the sea. And it turns out… it’s kind of really easy?

I’ve mentioned before that I was supposed to be on my first trip to Mexico right around now so it definitely caught my eye when a diving school in Cozumel came up during my search. Cozumel Scuba School has all-inclusive DiveMaster certification courses for people of all levels, even people who have never been scuba diving before! The website claims that they pay for all your class materials and the costs associated with diving as well as your housing in a hostel/dorm-style room. That sounds like a dream!

At my current level of certification, I would need to take the Gold Package Internship, which takes 4 weeks to complete as you need to get certified in Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver, Primary and Secondary Care Provider, and then finally the Divemaster. And it’s only $3500. That kind of sounds like an incredible deal! A $3500 4 week scuba diving trip in Cozumel *without* certifications doesn’t even sound terribly expensive, it’s almost too good to be true! After that would come the actual Instructor Course, their cheapest package is an additional $2800.

Koh Tao, Thailand is the most popular place in the world to get your PADI International Diving Instructor certification and at under $2000, I can see why. Dive instructors don’t typically make a lot of money and they can have extremely long work days, but it sounds like it might be worth it if you truly love to dive.

Overall, that’s a really big investment for an expensive sport, but I’m kind of in love with the idea of diving all over the world. This is definitely something I want to consider, and I can always bring the price down by taking the smaller certifications separately on my own time, though passing up on 4 weeks in Cozumel sounds almost criminal.

I found another course at the Marine Conservation Phillipines that is similarly priced at $3500 for the Divemaster portion of the classes, but they include housing *and* food, and it’s for 8 weeks! That’s only $62.50 a day! They seem to really stress that they are focused on their conservation efforts and think it’s more important to take a longer time and train capable Divemasters than just churn out new certifications. They require their volunteers to be part of their conservation works and their dives are much more focused on science and marine life than typical dive shops. I think this one may have won me over. God, there are just so many amazing opportunities out there! How am I ever going to pick something?!

After sitting on this post for a couple days I’ve decided that this isn’t the right move for me. As much as I love this idea and am adding it to a list of life goals, my mission this year isn’t to find a program I can pay a bunch of money to, it’s to find a working holiday in a country outside the US. If after working for a few months or a year abroad I find that I’ve saved enough money to afford something like this, then it’s very high on my list of experiences, but I need to keep my eyes on the prize for now.

Have you taken a Divemaster class? What was your experience?