bpage08:
What does your job involve, archman, and is a bachelors degree helpful in the field?
If it were just for me I'd probably just go to a commercial diving school but I don't want to throw away all the time I've spent taking college classes and all the money my parents have spent for them.
Is the job field for a field biologist, such as yourself archman, limited? How hard would it be to land a decent paying and stable job doing field work?
It's difficult to explain this properly, but the college education really isn't important for you to
participate in most scientific diving programs. You'll be trained by your particular program according to
their needs.
However, these are almost all volunteer-type positions. To make a CAREER out of scientific diving, that would necessitate establishing a research niche for yourself involving you being er... underwater. You'd need to become a coral reef ecologist for example, or a nautical archaeologist. There's a professor in my area that specializes in exploring subterrannean caves for new species of life.
Folks like this have PhD's usually, and have worked their butts off to rationalize to the grant-sponsoring organizations their need to "goof around" on scuba. They rarely have permanent staff that go diving with them either, but have graduate students.
Most field biologists don't scuba dive. There's little need to, and scuba is a lousy way to conduct experiments and perform observations. Myself, even though I'm a trained field biologist, my research does not require me to scuba dive. But I love teaching science to students, so I "ditch" university in the summertime and work at marine educational facilities where scuba is a prominent aspect of the curriculum. In essence, I've carved out a part-time "niche" for myself in scientific diving, but in a laborious, roundabout way.
Think of true "scientific divers" in the same light as paleontologists, or archaeologists. There's only a very few of them to be found worldwide, but the list of part-timers and volunteers is HUGE. All of those other people have regular jobs, usually bearing little/no relation to scuba diving. A lot of college kids and retirees make up the ranks.
So pursuing scientific diving as a direct career path really isn't a viable option. You pursue the science first, and then figure out the scuba later. You'll probably need a PhD and tenure at a university, or a government position at a field station.
Commercial diving and going pro in recreational diving are the only real career paths for scuba (i.e. those with specific programs to employ scuba divers), unless you want to join the military. A lot of these people have college degrees, but have simply decided to make a go at diving. Lots of people in the general job markets don't really use their college degrees much; many don't need to draw on it at all.
What many people who enjoy scuba do however, is simply secure a job that makes oodles of money (i.e. doctor, lawyer, ENGINEERS), and take lots of scuba-diving vacations. That's the BEST way to visit and dive exotic locales. Even the venerable Paul Humann started out this way; he was originally a lawyer with a fondness for diving. So I wouldn't rule out engineering if you think it'll keep you out of scuba. On the contrary, it may be the best thing for you! Who knows, maybe you'll become one of those guys that designs scuba equipment. Who better to "try out" that stuff, than the dude who designed them!
Hope some of this helps.
