Before I start this thread is in now way meant to be disrespectful to Candidate DM’s, Qualified DM’s and Instructors.
My question is this. Is 60 logged dives prior to qualification of a DM and or 100 logged dives for an Instructor – an appropriate experience level? (PADI)
My perspective. I’m at 100 dives, I dive warm waters but in challenging conditions. However I don’t feel that I have enough experience to be either a DM or an Instructor at 100 dives I’m still learning….
When I was getting certified I thought DM’s and Instructors were gods and while I’m happy with my diving I’m not confidant that I’d be a good peer or would I?
On the flip side I appreciate that for most people getting to 60/100 dives takes a few years and if you raised the logged dive requirement to say 200/250 then there would be a shortage of candidates – or at least a smaller pool of them…
It would be good to hear opinions from those who aren’t qualified (as DM’s Instructors) as well as those who are with the benefit of hindsight
Please lets not let this thread drift off into Agency bashing – although different perspective is welcome and lets attempt to keep this thread on topic (for a change
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It's difficult to say how many dives a person should have prior to beginning training as a dive professional ... because there are a lot of variables, including the types of dives, the environmental conditions, equipment requirements, whether they're guided dives or dives you've planned and executed independently, and not least of all your background and aptitude for learning.
It's much easier to state that for most of us, 60 or even 100 dives isn't nearly enough ... especially if those dives are spread out over a few years. I'd prefer it if entry into the professional ranks were less numerical and more contextual ... a series of prerequisite exams that tested knowledge, skill level, and attitude ... recognizing that the last would be very difficult to quantify, but it would have to include some scenarios that would test your ability to make good decisions with respect to basic emergency management and dive safety.
To put this in a different context, who would you rather be taking piano lessons with ... someone who could play scales and progressions very well, or someone who also knew something about music composition? Who would you rather be learning football from ... someone who knew the rules of the game inside and out, or someone who could also explain strategy, schemes, and the mechanics of playing a particular position?
What we have right now in the scuba industry is a bar that's intentionally set very low ... and it's like that not because the industry needs more instructors (Lord knows we have way more than we need), but because it's financially advantageous to both the agencies and the dive operations to push people into pro-level classes as quickly as possible. There's historically a very high drop-out rate in scuba diving ... something like 75% of everyone who takes an OW class will be out of diving within a couple of years. So there's an urgency to capture this market as quickly as possible, to exploit an enthusiasm for the activity and sell an image of a life that doesn't really exist, except perhaps for a tiny percentage of dive instructors, in order to get these new divers to spend more money on classes that they'll never really need or use.
The reality is that the majority of people who take Divemaster training will never work in the diving industry. A significant percentage of those who go on to take instructor training will never teach a class ... or they'll do it for a few months and realize it's not what they thought it would be. And the ones that do will, for the most part, fail miserably at being anything remotely like quality instructors. The successful ones will almost always be either people who exceeded the minimum standards by a wide margin prior to entering the professional ranks ... or they will be people who survived the initial couple of years and learned through a sequence of bad experiences what they needed to know in order to be successful.
What I would like to see is for the bar to be raised ... significantly. In addition to the higher entry standards I mentioned previously it should include a mandatory apprenticeship period at each level prior to being granted a license to teach at that level.
As long as there's financial incentive for dive shops to crank out "dive pros" like so many sausages ... creating a glut of divemasters and instructors who are willing to work for practically nothing ... you can expect the output of their classes to be less than satisfactory. Sure it gets people into diving quickly and easily ... but I question whether this is a good thing. More people coming into the sport can be ... but not if three quarters of them end up dropping out.
As one dive shop owner I know put it a few years back when we had this discussion ... all too often people learn just enough in class to scare themselves out of the sport. That doesn't do much for the health of the industry, unless your business strategy revolves around the notion that there's plenty more where they came from ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
