How To Become a Dive Professional | Scuba Diving
The Pros & Cons of Being a Scuba Diving Instructor
Heads up! The good and the bad about becoming a dive instructor.
Darcy Kieran is the author of the handbook “Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to Make a Good Living Out of Your Passion for Scuba Diving” and a unique advanced logbook & checklists for scuba divers, divemasters & instructors.
A few years ago, I worked with a European private equity firm considering an investment in the dive industry. In the end, they did not invest. They concluded that the dive industry was more “a melting pot of hobbyists” than an industry. It may be so, but I believe it is actually an opportunity — there is a need for a new dive industry business model, and whoever implements it first will reap the largest rewards.
But what does that have to do with the pros and the cons of being a dive instructor?
If you are reading this post, it’s probably because you love scuba diving. You love it so much that you wonder if you could be lucky enough to make a living out of it. That is the most attractive feature of being a dive instructor: It’s a dream come true! The key to success for you is to go beyond being a hobbyist to become a real dive professional.
If you take the time and put the effort to be a professional in a sea of hobbyists, you may reap exceptional rewards. There is a need for more professionals in the dive industry. And it’s there for you if you want it.
The Pros of Being a Dive Instructor
As a dive instructor, you may get to scuba dive around the world! Your friends and family members will be jealous. While they sit in a soul-crushing grey cubicle at their workplace and browse their Facebook feed, they will see pictures of you enjoying the great outdoors.
Beyond impressing people, you have the opportunity to change people’s lives. Scuba diving is a life-changing experience.
And if you enjoy coaching people, you will have the chance to do a lot of that in a much more exceptional environment than if you were a coach of some sport at a local high school.
Perhaps the best part of being a dive instructor is that you get to live in a “Blue Mind.”
Blue Mind is a book by Wallace J. Nichols (affiliate link) in which he shows how being near, in, on, or under water can make you happier, healthier, more connected, and better at what you do. In your case, as a dive instructor, it’s a fringe benefit of the job!
Otherwise, you get to nibble on many different things. Working as a dive instructor comes with some repetitive tasks, like showing people how to remove and replace a mask underwater, but overall, it comes with a wide variety of activities besides teaching. You are likely to be involved in filling cylinders, maintaining dive gear, caring for the dive boat, entertaining client-divers when at the surface, handling social media activities, explaining gear selection to new divers, and the list goes on. You will not constantly be shoveling the same pile of paper in a soul-crushing cubicle.
Finally, you will be on a never-ending path to learning. You can continuously improve your skills or learn new ones, in and out of the water. For me, that is a significant part of being a scuba diving instructor.
Complete guide to success: Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to make a good living out of your passion for scuba diving.Next, we will look at the “cons” of being a dive instructor, and you will wonder why “the bad” list appears to be longer than “the good” one. It’s because the “pros” of being a dive instructor tend to be general in nature. It’s about being outdoors and doing stuff we love with other people. The “cons” are more specific, which will make that list appear longer. In the end, it is your call to determine if the pros outweigh the cons. I think they do.
The Cons of Being a Dive Instructor
One of the most annoying parts of being a professional dive instructor is that you are joining an industry where there is a systematic lack of professionalism. You need to over-compensate for the lack of professionalism by others. As a dive guide, you will regularly lead inadequately trained divers with poorly maintained dive gear. As a dive instructor, you will receive students who have done the pool work with another instructor, and you will wonder if they went in the water at all!
Otherwise, there are a few other things on this “bad” list.
You will often be away from home. If you work in an origin (urban) dive center in a city like Nashville, your diver-clients typically have a full-time job, or they could not afford your services! Therefore, you will teach scuba diving on weekends and evenings. If you work in a resort or a live-aboard, then you are, by definition, away from home all the time, unless your family finds a way to follow you under these tropical skies.
You will have a lot of responsibilities. People’s lives will be in your hands. It is not something to take lightly! And yet, you will, typically, get paid very little for doing it. We will discuss proper compensation for instructor work in a forthcoming post. Subscribe to be kept in the loop.
Furthermore, you will do things you tell divers not to do because they are too dangerous, like Yo-Yo diving, which is repeatedly going up and down. You will do so when teaching ascent and descent skills to a large group. You will also do so on some dive sites where the captain will have you go down to the mooring, alone, on arrival at the site.
Teaching scuba diving and leading groups of divers is a physically demanding job. You may have to limit your partying the night before.
While on the topic of health, there are two significant issues.
First, you will be automatically off work when you catch a cold or face other illnesses. It is not like at the office where you can tough it out. Second, if you are working in an isolated resort or on a live-aboard, you may be far from healthcare services should you need them.
This brings us to insurance. It is difficult to find health insurance that covers scuba diving accidents and even less when you are abroad for the entire year and doing it as a profession.
Many dive centers won’t have proper workers’ compensation insurance should you be injured on the job — and it is a dangerous job. You could get more than a paper-cut!
Otherwise, you will have to deal with client-divers who take it as gospel that the customer is always right. You will regularly have to deal with people behaving dangerously — for them and you. Many of these people will refuse to listen to you. In fact, they will expect you to obey and satisfy all their wishes.
Even worse, you will have to deal with dive center owners and managers asking you to do crazy things. It’s incredible what people do when the rent is overdue by three months, and the fridge is empty. Many dive centers are barely profitable, and although that is no reason to cut corners and play with people’s lives, you will see just that.
And one more thing we can’t neglect to mention is that we depend on the travel industry, as we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. When countries close their borders to tourists, there is not much we can do besides flying back home and trying to find something else to do.
We also depend on the environment. Events like coral bleaching seriously threatened the viability of dive resort operations. Although some scuba diving activities are not reliant on coral reefs, most of the scuba diving activities around the world are tied to coral reefs and tourism.
I addressed these issues, how they affect you as a dive instructor, and how to deal with them in a complete guide to success as a scuba diving instructor.
Also from Darcy Kieran:
- Handbook: Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to Make a Good Living Out of Your Passion for Scuba Diving.
- Logbook: Advanced Scuba Diving Logbook with Checklists for certified scuba divers, divemasters & dive instructors.
- Handbook: Advanced Guide to SPF Scuba Diving for Scuba Divers, Divemasters & Dive Instructors: Develop Better Scuba Diving Skills, Dive Safer, Save Money & Have More Fun!
- Handbook: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To Scuba Diving: How to Increase Safety, Save Money & Have More Fun!
- Logbook: STARTER Scuba Diving Logbook with Checklists while getting your open water diver certification!
- Reference book: Scuba Diving Industry Market Reports, Data & Statistics.
Side note: During your surface intervals, have a look at my novels with a scuba diving twist, starting with “Mystery of The Blue Dragon” and “Shadows on Ocean Drive.”
You could help the dive industry by taking part in ongoing dive industry surveys. You will also find results from our past scuba diving market studies here.
Don’t be left out! Subscribe to Scubanomics: The Dive Industry Compass to be the first to know about new dive industry market data & insights. Otherwise, be our “dive business buddy” on LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere.
What now? Have a look at the complete Scubanomics Table of Contents.
