Diver0001 once bubbled...
Well...sort of.
In the PADI system you need 20 + resucue diver and a first-aid/cpr course to enter the DM course. You need 60 dives before you can be certified as a DM.
Same goes for instructor. You can start with 100 dives but you need 120 before you can be certified IIRC.
I agree with you, however, that these should be higher. If I had my way there wouldn't be any DM's out there with fewer than 200 dives and no instructors with fewer than 400. Expanding the boundaries of the prof certfications like this would give PADI the room to add a couple of water skills courses to the mix.
R..
Last night I went to make a dive with a guy, and he asked if we could dive for 20 mins, make a 15 min SI, then dive for another 20 mins. Than way he could "legally" log the one tank as 2 dives. He said he needs 50 logged dive to take the DM course (SSI), and that the instructor told him to get it done quickly by doing 15 min SIs on all dives to double the number of logged dives. How do you like THAT??