DM ? what's the role of a Dive master

[dwhthediver]

When I teach a DM is my extra eyes and hands to lend assistance to students when they need it. When I am on vacation, I expect a thorough briefing and don't touch my gear. That earns you your tip. I explain to the DM that I am taking pictures just let me do my thing, promise will not stay in longer than an hour,usually find cool critters close to the boat. In Hawaii this Feb. the DM always ended the briefing by looking at me and my buddy Jason and would say "yeah, I know, see you at the end of the dive."

 

[Tigerman]

DMs has IMO two "primary roles"

1) Assist with educating new divers
2) Guiding dives for one or groups of divers. - This I quite often see instructors doing as well. Some places they dont hire DMs cause they cant teach (alone).

In 1 I have no specific expectations, Im not an instructor so I dont deal with that part.

While guiding however that is what I expect - guiding.
As part of said guiding I expect a good dive brief, including signals normally used in certain situations like for example pickups.
In some areas the dive boats have different pickup/ok signals depending on the dive op - Its nice to be picked up by the right boat and not be on the wrong one while the dive op you came out with search for you.
I also expect general information as to behaviour on the boat, where to find refreshments and such to be handled by the DM.
While under water I do expect the dm/guide to keep an eye on all of the group and assisting in case of arising issues, but my main expectation is for them to point out things of interest and/or lead us to places where things of interest tend to hang out.
And of course I expect them to be polite and not more grumpy than they need to - and by than they need to I mean if people dont obey dive plans and ignore safety regulations they should be allowed to rip them a new one if the violation warrants it.

I love dms doing the latter to snorklers sitting on the coral reefs - especially when said snorkler has their ass full of firecoral burns the next day >:->

EDIT: Yeah, and what the person above me said..

 

[DivemasterDennis]

There is an article in scubadiverlife.com titled "Good Divemaster, Bad Divemaster" that you might enjoy, written by yours truly.
DivemasterDennis