Technical Diving as a career?

[Scuba_Nick27]

That’s not technical diving. That’s commercial diving. If you’re getting paid for it, commercial diving.

I suspect you mean commercial diving not ‘technical’ diving. Generally technical diving is taken to mean deeper or particular complicated recreation (a season in for fun) diving. Examples might include multi gas deco, caves, wreck penetrations. Here (the UK) most such activity is explicitly not allowed for commercial diving without so much support it becomes impractical without enormous budgets.

If your really mean technical as in the sense of deep trimix etc, then the main thing seems to be teaching. If you want to be a good teacher you ought to really know your stuff and be doing the diving you are teaching for.

My technical dive instructor is about as good as they get. Teaches multiple rebreathers. Works as a safety diver on research vessels (makes sure the engineers who are paying more attention to there research projects than to there diving make is back safe). He still has a day job selling flooring, kitchen and bath remodels. So I will say that pure technical diving isn't really a career path. If you find a way into one of the companies that makes gear, you could make a career out of that.

Now if you really mean commercial diving, that is a completely different game. Which is a lot of not diving and supporting the few that dive for a long time. After a lot of that you might start getting to dive a little bit.

Market is saturated. Schools turned out more divers than needed. I hired two grads a couple years ago who were looking at either offshore oilfield work or high paying inshore work not swimming in poo. Not much available so they ended up spearfishing with me. As we regularly dove greater that 130' with planned deco you could call it technical.

Not as a living, no. I do have my commercial ticket and do the occasional commercial diving job, but only for fun and a bit of extra pin money. Would I rely on it as my only source of income, no way, but then I'm much older than you and have a wife, mortgage, grown up kids and a dog to support.

As @100days-a-year says, the current job market for comm divers, particularly baby divers, may be pretty tough at the moment. Obviously training schools have a vested interest in giving you a positive spin, so I'd maybe make contact with a couple of contractors in the US and ask their opinion first.

My parent's neighbor is a commercial diver in the oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. He said he could make close to 100K per year "IF" he could get steady work. He said steady work is rare, so he probably makes less than half that most years.

There are A LOT of easier ways to make 100k per year, without going 35k into student loan debt.

A buddy of mine did the commercial thing for a while. He broke out after hurricane Katrina. Lots of salvage dives. It still took a while before he started getting the good dives with depth pay offshore. He said just take every dive unless you had a bad feeling about it and break out as fast as you can. Also he had to put lots of time in at the shop working on gear and stuff like that.

Allot of guys start their diving in a marsh somewhere in Louisiana blowing out mud from around well heads and pipelines in 6' of water. Those that stick with it can make pretty good money.

Another guy I know was a SAT diver. He's not diving now but still works as a consultant. He preferred the SAT diving to the bounce stuff. His reasoning was that for every dive there was only one compression and one decompression and that it was easier on your body. From my understanding, bounce guys can have bone and joint issues later in life and the SAT guys have neurological issues if either of them dive for too long. I don't know that to be fact though it's just what I heard.

All this is just info I've heard from friends or people I've worked around. The actual commercial guys here can give you a better idea of what's going on now.

Something to also consider is that commercial diving might more truthfully be described as underwater construction work. The career ups and downs have been dutifully explained above, but you should also consider that diving (that's to say the underwater experience underwater you've accrued to this point) is most likely very, very different to the experience of standing on a scaffold at 20 metres with a shovel or welding lance in your hand.

Growing up around commercial divers working rigs in louisiana I can say that your thoughts of it being a "fun" job may not be accurate. People I knew would say it's a cool job doing alot of interesting things, but it's also very hard work under even harder conditions and very few would have labeled their job as "fun". Many also ended up having to find a new career after 10-15 years due to the toll they're body paid.
Alot of them also said that commercial diving ends up making regular diving absolutely zero fun.
Obviously these are generalizations and there will be differences from diver to diver based on their experience and the jobs they had. The commercial divers I've known are doing alot of deep saturation dives doing some ridiculously hard and dangerous work.

I've made money doing both technical diving and commercial diving, but that is more the exception than the rule, mostly because I am so geographically isolated that I am the only game in town. Also I was a fully qualified oilfield pipefitter and welder before I started diving, which has been incredibly helpful in commercial diving. Being paid for technical diving has mostly been scientific work or guiding.

Thank you everyone for the advice. I'm finishing high school so right now is the moment to choose what I want to go into as a career. I probably will get to technical in diving, but will have to really think about commercial. As a main career I'm looking towards being a helicopter pilot, preferably commercial or airway transport... any thoughts or knowledge about that career? Any advice would be very appreciated

 

[Superlyte27]

Thank you everyone for the advice. I'm finishing high school so right now is the moment to choose what I want to go into as a career. I probably will get to technical in diving, but will have to really think about commercial. As a main career I'm looking towards being a helicopter pilot, preferably commercial or airway transport... any thoughts or knowledge about that career? Any advice would be very appreciated

You REALLY don't want to know what I think. But, I'll tell you anyway. Did you know you can make $100k+ your first or second year in the insurance industry? Did you know it doesn't even require a high school diploma. Did you know that insurance adjusters make about $300k the month after a hurricane hits?

There are really lucrative jobs out there that aren't glamorous, but no one ever thinks about them. Both of my daughters are under 23 years old, and intin second year of insurance will be making $100k+

 

[100days-a-year]

Even in construction there are jobs less than glamorous that pay a lot. Figure out what the hourly wages work out to for a door installer 50 floors up, a wallpaper hanger (me), a stone setter or some other off the wall niche. Union or non union too. A lot of my non college educated friends make more than many folks with master's degrees.
Balance those considerations on ability to pick your locale, free time off etc.. and you can easily enjoy diving as an affordable hobby.
Fixed and rotary wing pilots do well if they can find a gig if you're set on that path.

 

[broncobowsher]

My brother made it as a professional helicopter pilot. I think he was about 40 before he had a good paying job at it. He didn't get the military type of training, did it on his own, out of pocket. He worked as a flight instructor and at times he owed his boss money at the end of the month as he did more self training then he made on students. Once you get a commercial helicopter license (I don't remember all the levels he went through) on of the first gigs you will likely be doing is flying workers to off-shore oil platforms. The other likely gig is doing helicopter tours of the grand canyon. Those are the two main gigs for freshly minted pilots before they go off into other fields. The only other helicopter pilot I know is my grandmother's childhood boyfriend's son (which makes him zero relation to me or anyone else in the family), he did the powerline work, dropping workers off on power lines to fix them while energized. He retired from that and went back to grand canyon tours as he winds down for retirement.

 

[Scuba_Nick27]

You REALLY don't want to know what I think. But, I'll tell you anyway. Did you know you can make $100k+ your first or second year in the insurance industry? Did you know it doesn't even require a high school diploma. Did you know that insurance adjusters make about $300k the month after a hurricane hits?

There are really lucrative jobs out there that aren't glamorous, but no one ever thinks about them. Both of my daughters are under 23 years old, and intin second year of insurance will be making $100k+

Interesting. But I don't want a job that will pay a lot, and I won't be happy with the job. If I commit to a job, I'd better like it for the rest of the time that I will work. But I will keep insurance in mind... it's just paperwork and high pay.

 

[Superlyte27]

Interesting. But I don't want a job that will pay a lot, and I won't be happy with the job. If I commit to a job, I'd better like it for the rest of the time that I will work. But I will keep insurance in mind... it's just paperwork and high pay.

I work less than 4 hours a week. My paycheck this month paid for an airplane. A job is just a means to pay for the things you're passionate about in life.

 

[Scuba_Nick27]

I work less than 4 hours a week. My paycheck this month paid for an airplane. A job is just a means to pay for the things you're passionate about in life.

If you think about it that way then thats very true. Theres a lot to take in... I really don't know what career to take. I have top notch grades and scholarhips and all that... and universities are constantly inviting me over... but I in reality am lost in what I want to do. Flying a helicopter is probably the closest thing. Get this, I did a lot of things. I worked part time jobs, I did office jobs, physical jobs like construction, right now I work as a carrier dispatcher, and I liked all of those jobs... except construction... it sucks in Florida. That's why I'm sorta lost, I can do many things and I honestly have no preference in what I do.

 

[Scuba_Nick27]

My brother made it as a professional helicopter pilot. I think he was about 40 before he had a good paying job at it. He didn't get the military type of training, did it on his own, out of pocket. He worked as a flight instructor and at times he owed his boss money at the end of the month as he did more self training then he made on students. Once you get a commercial helicopter license (I don't remember all the levels he went through) on of the first gigs you will likely be doing is flying workers to off-shore oil platforms. The other likely gig is doing helicopter tours of the grand canyon. Those are the two main gigs for freshly minted pilots before they go off into other fields. The only other helicopter pilot I know is my grandmother's childhood boyfriend's son (which makes him zero relation to me or anyone else in the family), he did the powerline work, dropping workers off on power lines to fix them while energized. He retired from that and went back to grand canyon tours as he winds down for retirement.

And what did your brother think of the job? How much did he earn if that's not a secret?

 

[Superlyte27]

If you think about it that way then thats very true. Theres a lot to take in... I really don't know what career to take. I have top notch grades and scholarhips and all that... and universities are constantly inviting me over... but I in reality am lost in what I want to do. Flying a helicopter is probably the closest thing. Get this, I did a lot of things. I worked part time jobs, I did office jobs, physical jobs like construction, right now I work as a carrier dispatcher, and I liked all of those jobs... except construction... it sucks in Florida. That's why I'm sorta lost, I can do many things and I honestly have no preference in what I do.

Where are you in FL?

 

[Scuba_Nick27]

Where are you in FL?

Sarasota. Southwest FL