DM for recreational diver?

[MAC431]

rye a,

I agree with Reg Braithwaite's statement. If you are just getting the DM cert. to impress or think it will provide you proffesional curdosy while on vacation, you are doing it for the wrong reasons. If you plan to get the cert. to gain the experience to help others in your dive group and not actively work as a DM, that is fine however let your LDS now that you rae not interested in the crash (6 week) course, you want the DM course as if they planned to let you work at their shop. It took me one year to complete my DM since my LDS new that I wanted to work at the shop they made me aware that I would have to put in a minmum of one year working with different instructors & DM's as well as my Certifying Instructor to become a competent DM by experiencing many different situations that id impossible to see and learn in six weeks. This is the LDS's policy and I now thru experience that this was the best learning experience I could have ever been put thru. I see the abilities / diving levels of the professionals at my LDS to be far more superior than from other professionals that I have seen out there, this is not to say that there are not alot of other great dive prof. out there because there are I am simply saying that the level of training that I recieved was bar non superior. With all this said if you simply take the six week crash DM course, in my opinion you are not totally ready to help other divers in most situations simply since you did not have time to experience them and you cannot replace experinece over time with short term knowledge gain. The six week course will make you a better diver pending the quality of your instruction and belive it or not the course did not cost me extra to do it over a year, I believe I paid $450 total. Good luck on what ever you decide and hopefully this was some help even though it is my personnel opinion.

Mark

 

[Slonda828]

OP,

I would like to agree with and add to MAC431 comments.

I am currently working at a dive shop as a DM candidate, and part time as a repair tech and tank filling station operator. I've been doing it since November, and it's been working out well for me. If you stress certain things up front, then you end up the kind of DM you want to be out of the course if you meet the right instructor. I wanted to become an expert in the components of dive equipment that could fail, so I got trained on how to repair regs, BCs, and how to fill and visually inspect tanks. I am still expanding my knowledge in many of these areas as we speak. My save a dive kit is pretty awesome now, and I know the differences between a -10 and a -11 O-ring, and whether it is Viton or Buna by eyesight. I got what I asked for, because I made clear what I wanted.

I also became a better diver by proxy. Just like a photog has to have buoyancy down to get good pictures, you sort of must have good buoyancy skills to assist divers if you don't plan on kneeling on the bottom (assuming there is one) all the time. Great comments have been made on this thread, but if you are clear up front with your expectations, your instructor should be able to tell you if he or she can facilitate your learning in that fashion. Just be willing to work without pay or just for fills and odds and ends for a while part time, and you'll learn a TON.

Hope this helps.

 

[halocline]

I know the differences between a -10 and a -11 O-ring, and whether it is Viton or Buna by eyesight.

Well, can you tell the difference between a Buna-n and EPDM o-ring? Viton is way too easy.

I took my DM class for far more selfish reasons; it was the cheapest way to dive for a summer in the Caribbean. I did learn a few things and I think it improved my diving overall. It definitely improved by ability to dive with less experienced divers and to evaluate situations for potential safety issues, and to distinguish those from normal beginning diver behavior. How much someone else would learn would depend on the instructor(s), how much dive skill and experience you had going into the course, your attitude towards the course, and how much diving was involved. Mine involved daily diving for six weeks, about 100 dives I imagine. Not bad for $600. Of course I did fill and carry more than a few tanks.

 

[Slonda828]

Well, can you tell the difference between a Buna-n and EPDM o-ring? Viton is way too easy.

I took my DM class for far more selfish reasons; it was the cheapest way to dive for a summer in the Caribbean. I did learn a few things and I think it improved my diving overall. It definitely improved by ability to dive with less experienced divers and to evaluate situations for potential safety issues, and to distinguish those from normal beginning diver behavior. How much someone else would learn would depend on the instructor(s), how much dive skill and experience you had going into the course, your attitude towards the course, and how much diving was involved. Mine involved daily diving for six weeks, about 100 dives I imagine. Not bad for $600. Of course I did fill and carry more than a few tanks.

Matt,

I would say that we have had similar results though. I think the moral of the story is that a DM program can make you a better diver if you treat it as a way to do so. It worked for you and it continues to work for me. It seems to have worked for MAC431 as well.

 

[kathydee]

PADI distinguishes between active and inactive divemaster status - -B

If you are an inactive divemaster do you need to carry DM Insurance? Would inactive status minimize potential liability?

Is it difficult to switch between active and inactive status?

 

[boulderjohn]

If you are an inactive divemaster do you need to carry DM Insurance? Would inactive status minimize potential liability?

Is it difficult to switch between active and inactive status?

You go to inactive status automatically whn you stop paying your insurance and your membership dues. Going back the other way takes a little more effort.

You only need the insurance if you are working in some way in the role of a divemaster--whether you are being paid for it or not. If you take on a leadership role on the basis of having that certification level such that others are some way dependent upon your expertise, then you have potential liability should you fail to perform as expected in that role.

Whenever these threads get started, the fear of being sued as a DM for some undeserved reason arises and takes on a life of its own. People write as if it happens all the time, but it pretty much never happens in the real world. In one thread an attorney did a search and couldn't find any cases other than the one that instigated the thread, and in that case the DM was clearly a Bozo jerk who richly deserved to be sued and who gathered no support in the thread.

That is not, however, a reason not to be insured if you are taking on liability by assuming a diving leadership role. As suggested in an earlier post, if you are not active and insured, make sure you do not so anything that differentiates yourself from the other divers in your group.

 

[exigetastic]

Wow... Google has let me down

I was about to post almost an identical request, but after an hour searching I thought I'd ask the question directly and stumbled across this thread :cool2:!

I suppose my situation is fairly similar to the original poster, in that I'm interested in taking a DM course,but not to actively be a "professional".

Up until fairly recently I'd done most of my diving on holiday (sorry vacation), so nice warm blue water, and easy diving in the red sea.

Being based in the UK, I'd not really planned on doing anything else.

However after one trip I enrolled at a local shop to take my rescue course because I never felt truly "self sufficient" on the guided dives whilst abroad. Couple this with the fact I was planning on doing some diving off the Canaries in December (I knew this would be different to Egypt in July , but didn't realise HOW different )

Anyway I'm glad I did! The instructor and other memebers of the "club" have been great. I've sat in on some OW classes (my wife did a refreral course with them) and they are sooo much more thorough than the one I took abroad.

I've now been offered a DM course (at a price that is so low as to not enter the list below)

The problems I see are:
- the liability issues
- the fact I'll have to go diving in the UK which will eat into my time with the family (in return for 4c water temps and 3ft viz).
- i'll need to buy a drysuit

The plus sides I see are:
- it will "force" me to push out my comfort zone (see above and the 4c (34f iirc) water)
- increase my dive experience (I'm only @65 dives currently)



If anyone else could help me extend the list of things to consider I'd be really grateful!

Thanks

Simon

 

[Sirena_Elena]

I think my husband might weigh in here, but he was very disappointed to discover that there was essentially no development of diving skill involved in his DM class. There was a lot about being a professional, and how to assist with classes, but nobody really evaluated his diving skill (or that of any of his classmates) or attempted to improve it.QUOTE]

They didn't try to polish the skills for demonstration quality? Maybe he was already that good!!

 

[SailNaked]

I...-Finally, I believe that being a DM will make me more credible when arranging for rentals of multiple sets of equipment, refills, etc. with the LDS in the BVIs.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Am I way off base?

I have no insight into DM course like the rest of the posts but I will can tell you that I rented 4 sets of gear and 12 tanks for the boat in BVI with a credit card and an OW card without my picture on it from 1982 no questions asked. Diving in BVI is like diving in your backyard pool, not much on briefings and such more like " um lets go about there for a bit then come back" you park your boat at any of the 75+ listed sites on a ball that is cemented to the sea floor and swim about. nice, easy. we did over 30 dives and no one was more than OW. little to no current, stay out of the north when there is north swell and out of the south when there is south swell and all is swell.

 

[Peter Guy]

Sirena -- I think you misunderstood what TSandM wrote -- she wrote

nobody really evaluated his diving skill (or that of any of his classmates) or attempted to improve it

Your response

They didn't try to polish the skills for demonstration quality?

seems to indicate that you believe "demonstration skills" has some direct relation to "diving skills" and I happen to believe they are two very different things (at least in the PADI world in which I'm living).

No, in MY DM class, there was no real attempt to improve the overall diving skill(s) of the class members -- no work on better buoyancy control, no work on trim, no work on more efficient kicks, etc. There was work on teaching the "20 demonstration quality skills" but that has nothing to do with one's diving skills. BTW, in my particular class, IF there was anything that was "deficient" in the class (but within standards!), it was a lack of work on the demonstration skills -- but my DM class was a "little strange" in that all the students, except me, were PSD people (who had zero interest in working with students OR divers).