Padi Instructors, France

[Nautilus23]

Thanks Phil, for your reply!

That certainly was not the case a while back. The BEES exam was about €200 I think. Also I think there are many venues in France to take it as some parts apply to swimming instructors as well as scuba.

Have a chat with these guys: college-cannes

When I looked into it the PADI OWSI gave significant exemptions from many parts of the BEES.

As a PADI OWSI you cannot undertake decompression diving so you cannot be granted "equivalence" at FFESSM N3. You need to undertake a decompression course. If you have the PADI Deep or another equivalent under the PADI system you can cross over to N3 with a short course.

More here - Conversion Rescue Diver PADI - Niveau 3 FFESSM avec Voyage-Plongée.com

Are you, by any chance female? Are the people you are speaking to by any chance male? Just a thought

 

[Nautilus23]

Thanks for the info, I will look into it. PADI has a bad name in France for some reason.

 

[chrisch]

Thanks for the info, I will look into it. PADI has a bad name in France for some reason.

In some places that is true. The old dinosaur divers tend to have that view. If you go to the Med resorts you will find plenty of PADI centres and PADI instructors as there are plenty of PADI tourists. We dive with these guys in Carry - Plongée Passion Carry-le-Rouet Marseille and they do a lot of PADI (and IANTD) training. Also Centre de Plongée Cap d'Agde Méditerranée : Centre de Plongée Abyss plongée near us in Montpellier.

We did our crossover to level 3 to avoid all the hassle of having an instructor with us so we use that PIC rather than the PADI/IANTD ones. I did look into teaching but the BEES put me off. If your French is good and you swim well it is not a problem (my swimming skills are a bit rusty). I don't think the money is there any more to do what we had planned (private lessons with villa rental).

My wife has rather become preoccupied with cave diving now so we have spent the last few years building skills on that area and diving in the Lot region. Many places you just park up and dive no one there to look at your cert cards....

I hope you get some better results and less negative nonsense. France has some great diving and is a wonderful place to live. I wish you every success and hope you find some people that appreciate the time and effort you have already put in. Try asking around on plongeur - the French language dive forum. Lot of very friendly helpful people there - just like there are here.

 

[Nautilus23]

Hi Chrisch, thanks so much for your positive feedback! I am actually thinking of moving to Med side, as being in Hautes Pyrenees is not ideal for diving, unless you want to do ice diving in Piau Engaly... I think you are probably right about the attitude I am getting. I hope when I move to Perpignan / Toulon there may be more opportunities. I will look into it further. I did originally get the negative response from the horse's mouth in Paris, at the Salon du Plongee 2013 when I spoke to the European heads of PADI and their equivalents at FFESSM, they could not come up with any way for me to be able to work in France. But this may have all been political, who knows!

 

[chrisch]

You're not so far from Argeles there. Antares is PADI - PADI - Centre de Plongée padi à Argeles sur mer pyrénées orientales The vis is usually pretty good in that part of the Med too. Also worth a look at Spain as it's not far away. My Spanish is not brilliant, but I have dived in Spain a couple of times at Iles Mendes, which is a well known place to go. Lots of English people dive there. We bought our flat in Montpellier before doing any diving in the area. Sadly we found out too late that the visibility is not good due to the river outflows. There is the chance to see seahorses in the lagoons though which is interesting.

Perpignan is a nice enough place. Not really France if you ask the locals. Very nice wine though! When you get there try to convince them to dive some of the wrecks. The French do seem too preoccupied with pretty little fish. We always struggle to get the wreck dives. There are some good ones if you look: Le top 10 des épaves de rêve en Languedoc-Roussillon

 

[chrisch]

Just an update on this - the BEES thing has now changed as far as I can see. There is some good information here: Devenir moniteur de plongée en France avec les brevets BPJEPS ET DEJEPS plongée - Plongée Marseille, formation plongée : le blog Aquadomia

Reading that if you get the N4 then you are half way there. However it does seem rather more time consuming than when I looked into it.

 

[chrisch]

This lady is your FFESSM rep:
Formation BP JEPS Plongée dans notre région - FFESSM PM

I can see a number of dive centres offering a "stage" for MF1 and the BEES replacement. Certainly not just Marseille.

Centre de plongée Réderis Sub à Banyuls sur Mer, plongée sou glace, formations, exploration, plongée enfant, monitorat... - Moniteurs

 

[iamrushman]

howdy and welcome from south Florida USA......

 

[Fedaykin]

Situation is also similar in Turkey also. Difference here is you can work as PADI instructor, give certificates but no Turkish citizen can dive if they don’t have CMAS certificate If you are a citizen of another country then there is no problem. Weirdness is all over the world.

 

[Nautilus23]

In some places that is true. The old dinosaur divers tend to have that view. If you go to the Med resorts you will find plenty of PADI centres and PADI instructors as there are plenty of PADI tourists. We dive with these guys in Carry - Plongée Passion Carry-le-Rouet Marseille and they do a lot of PADI (and IANTD) training. Also Centre de Plongée Cap d'Agde Méditerranée : Centre de Plongée Abyss plongée near us in Montpellier.

We did our crossover to level 3 to avoid all the hassle of having an instructor with us so we use that PIC rather than the PADI/IANTD ones. I did look into teaching but the BEES put me off. If your French is good and you swim well it is not a problem (my swimming skills are a bit rusty). I don't think the money is there any more to do what we had planned (private lessons with villa rental).

My wife has rather become preoccupied with cave diving now so we have spent the last few years building skills on that area and diving in the Lot region. Many places you just park up and dive no one there to look at your cert cards....

I hope you get some better results and less negative nonsense. France has some great diving and is a wonderful place to live. I wish you every success and hope you find some people that appreciate the time and effort you have already put in. Try asking around on plongeur - the French language dive forum. Lot of very friendly helpful people there - just like there are here.

Thanks Phil, for your reply!

You're not so far from Argeles there. Antares is PADI - PADI - Centre de Plongée padi à Argeles sur mer pyrénées orientales The vis is usually pretty good in that part of the Med too. Also worth a look at Spain as it's not far away. My Spanish is not brilliant, but I have dived in Spain a couple of times at Iles Mendes, which is a well known place to go. Lots of English people dive there. We bought our flat in Montpellier before doing any diving in the area. Sadly we found out too late that the visibility is not good due to the river outflows. There is the chance to see seahorses in the lagoons though which is interesting.

Perpignan is a nice enough place. Not really France if you ask the locals. Very nice wine though! When you get there try to convince them to dive some of the wrecks. The French do seem too preoccupied with pretty little fish. We always struggle to get the wreck dives. There are some good ones if you look: Le top 10 des épaves de rêve en Languedoc-Roussillon

Hi there,
Thanks for your positive messages! I have made friends with a PADI dive centre in Argeles, and went diving with them last weekend around Coulliore which was fun. Lots of lobster and nudibranchs, and big schools of bream and anchovies. It still looks unlikely I can work here in France as an instructor without doing the BEES (now Djeps) 12 months of retraining, in Montpellier which costs several thousand euros! So, just diving for fun in France now, if I want to work as an instructor, just need to hop over the border to Spain! Hope you are having a good summer!
Best wishes,
Rebecca