Diving as a career

daveg

I'm toying with the idea of changing my career. Drastically. Not necessarily into diving but what options are there? Instructor, commercial ect ect. What/where training would you have to do to move into a career in diving?

I studied marine communications in collage and would love to use this in a career change.

bennyc

For whats its worth I have a mate who is a full time diver on a fish farm but I suppose net mending is a must ...
Is it not supposed to be bad for your health to be doing it for a living ?????

bigfeller

I think that there is an ad in the back of diver magazine for a place (in the states) that teaches technical/commercial diving and gives work placements. Not too sure if there is anywhere in Europe that does the same thing though.

daveg

Having trawled the web for some info I found this webpage which gives some great info on careers/courses in diving from instructor/dive master/lead diver to commercial diving. Makes very interesting reading. Perhaps this will build up into an interesting thread and if so I might take the details out and make it a sticky.

NordicDiver

How about become a Padi instructor and tour the world, have a white sandy beach with clear blue water and palmtrees as your office, work on your tan in the lunch?

www.divernet.com/profs/scooby0200.htm

www.divernet.com/profs/0702insts.htm

Peace

Originally posted by NordicDiver
How about become a Padi instructor and tour the world, have a white sandy beach with clear blue water and palmtrees as your office, work on your tan in the lunch?

www.divernet.com/profs/scooby0200.htm

www.divernet.com/profs/0702insts.htm

He would need a "get out of jail card" from the missus..

NordicDiver

There are alot of diving resorts looking for couples, especially in the Maldives. So try to get the missus with you
She could take people out on snorkel trips :cool:

daveg

Originally posted by Peace
He would need a "get out of jail card" from the missus..

Your on you last warning /shakes fist !!!!

Yep I'm afraid travelling the world is out as I have a GF, son and a mortgage.

A mate of mine was an instructor with Scubadive West a few years back. He gave up a high paying Software Engineer role to take up his passion. I seem to remember him telling me he was earning 1K irish a week during the summer.

olearydc

Hi there

Just a few words on your choices for change of career

I used to work with Telecom in the UK and like yourself wanted a big change in career...
Left and did a training course (12 weeks in Scotland) to become a commercial diver with a HSE1 cert, there were maybe 20 on the course at the time.
Armed with my new cert thought that I would be able to get a job in the North sea!!..very green..was told in no uncertain terms you need lots of experinance..

So left to go to the far east...from there to middle east and got a few jobs from cleaning hulls to civil works on harbours
after approx a year started to get to know the companies and find my feet and eventually got offshore where I stayed for a number of years...

Then got married, went back to college and got a degree and now working in IT!

I would say out of our class, maybe half got jobs Diving (not sure of the situation now as this was 10 years ago)

Would i do it again?....Yes great fun, money was ok for what we did (North sea guys get more) and it was a good time..
I would say before/If you do this, get some welding experinace before you go, it looks better on your CV and it will be easier to get your first job (do a night class maybe)

Anyhow...all the best:cool: