If you’ve trav­elled for any length of time around South­east Asia you quickly notice that there is one job many trav­el­lers do to fin­ance their stay. They become dive instruct­ors. I did. In this art­icle we’ll have a look at what courses you need to take to get to that level, how much it costs and how much you can earn. In the end I’ll have a few cau­tious words about the dive industry for you.

Dive courses

It’s only 5 dive courses to become a dive instructor. All courses lis­ted below are PADI pro­grammes. There are many more diver train­ing agen­cies around (SSI, NAUI, BSAC), but PADI is the largest and there­fore offers you the best chances of employ­ment. Read on to find out more inform­a­tion about each course.

Open Water Course

This is your entry level course. It will take either three or four days, depend­ing on how many stu­dents are in your group. You’ll start off with some the­ory and watch­ing a couple videos, then hop into the pool to do some basic exer­cises, like clear­ing your mask and reg­u­lator (the thing you breathe from). On a four day course this will be your first two days. At the end of day two you’ll do the exam (mul­tiple choice).

Then comes the fun part. Two days with two dives each. The first two dives will be to a max­imum depth of 12m. At the begin­ning you can expect maybe a 45 min dive, less if you feel a bit more excited. The dives on day four go to a max­imum depth of 18m.

Cost: EUR 250 — 300

Advanced Open Water Course

The advanced course has actu­ally been designed to fol­low straight after the OW course. It’s a five dive course and is usu­ally done over two days. There are two com­puls­ory dives, the deep dive to 30m and the nav­ig­a­tion dive. The other three dives can be chosen from a long list. Here’s some examples: Wreck, Mul­ti­level, Peak Per­form­ance Buoy­ancy, Night, Nat­ur­al­ist, Pho­to­graphy and Search and Recovery.

There is no real the­ory involved in this course. You just have to do some inde­pend­ent read­ing and fill in some know­ledge reviews, which your instructor will quickly go over with you.

Cost: EUR 220 — 250

Res­cue Diver Course

Now, the res­cue course takes your skills to another level. It’s the first course where you focus on other people. Before you start this course you should be com­fort­able with your diving skills. You can only help another per­son if you don’t have to worry about your­self. It takes around 3 days and involves hardly any diving. You’ll do a lot of dif­fer­ent in-water res­cue scen­arios and learn the proper way to help an uncon­scious diver, includ­ing CPR. There is also a fair amount of self-study and classroom work to be done.

A pre­requis­ite for this course is that you have been trained in first aid and CPR within the last 2 years. If you haven’t done that you can do the Emer­gency First Response course (Cost: EUR 70–90). Every dive school offers this or a com­par­able course.

Cost: EUR 220 — 250

Dive­mas­ter Course

While the other courses could all be done in a mat­ter of days, you’ll need at least 4 weeks for the dive­mas­ter course. Bet­ter yet are 6 to 8 weeks. This course is your ticket to becom­ing a dive instructor and also the first pro­fes­sional level. You will learn all the neces­sary the­ory, like phys­ics and physiology, and hone your prob­lem solv­ing and organ­iz­a­tional skills. You will have to assist your instruct­ors on a num­ber of courses and do some swim tests. Even though you are still a cus­tomer, you’ll essen­tially be part of the team already, so expect to do some work as well.

It pays to pay atten­tion to the the­ory les­sons. The instructor the­ory exams are also based on what you learn then. A lot of dive schools offer unlim­ited diving while on the course, so take advant­age of this and dive as much as you can.

Cost: EUR 550 — 650
PADI fee: EUR 75
Equip­ment: EUR 1000 (can be much higher, but can also be lower for second hand gear)

Instructor Devel­op­ment Course (IDC)

The IDC usu­ally last for around 10 days, fol­lowed by 2 days Instructor Exam­in­a­tion. The IDC actu­ally con­sists of two courses, the Assist­ant Instructor Course and the Open Water Instructor Course. You will learn about teach­ing stand­ards, how to actu­ally teach courses and how to sell courses as well. As part of the course you are required to hold two con­fined water teach­ing present­a­tions, two know­ledge devel­op­ment present­a­tions and two Open Water teach­ing present­a­tions. You will also par­ti­cip­ate in a couple con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion workshops.

In the IE you will apply everything you learned dur­ing your Dive­mas­ter course and the IDC. You have to do the­ory exams on Phys­ics, Physiology, Equip­ment, Skills & Envir­on­ment and the PADI Recre­ational Dive Plan­ner and an exam about PADI Sys­tems, Stand­ards & Pro­ced­ures. This is fol­lowed by a dive the­ory teach­ing present­a­tion. In a swim­ming pool you have to present a five skill cir­cuit and a con­fined water teach­ing present­a­tion. In open water you have to per­form an uncon­scious diver res­cue at the sur­face and an open water teach­ing present­a­tion. After that it’s all party!!

Cost: EUR 900 — 1000
PADI fees: EUR 500

What can you earn?

As a dive instructor you can expect to earn any­thing from 20–30% of the course price. Say you have 4 stu­dents doing an open water course for EUR 275 that would mean you earn any­thing from EUR 220 to EUR 330 for four days work. Not too bad really, con­sid­er­ing the liv­ing costs in many pop­u­lar dive destinations.

You have to con­sider, though, that most dive instruct­ors are on a comis­sion based scheme, so if there are no stu­dents you don’t make any money. This was the case right after the 2004 Tsunami. I was man­aging a dive shop on Gili Trawan­gan and within a week of the tsunami we had hardly any cus­tom­ers left.

Still, you can have exceed­ingly good months. Before I went to Indone­sia I was work­ing on the west coast of Thai­l­and. In Novem­ber 2003 I earned almost EUR 2000. The down­side was that I had no day off at all dur­ing that month. Then the bird flu hit a few months later and I was lucky to make EUR 4–500 a month.

Some cau­tious words

You can do the above courses in 6 months. That’s exactly the time you have to be cer­ti­fied as a diver to attend the IDC. At the same time you need to have 60 logged dives to start the course and 100 dives to take the instructor exams. Do these num­bers sound a bit low to you? Would you like to be taught by an instructor with just 100 dives under his weight­belt? Neither would I. I wouldn’t recom­mend start­ing the IDC with less than 200 dives. I had logged 270 dives when I star­ted my IDC for example.

In the first para­graph, have you noticed that I used the term “dive industry”? I did that, because that’s exactly what it is, an industry. Just because you work in an exotic loc­a­tion, where other people come to hol­i­day, doesn’t mean that you can behave like you’re on hol­i­day too. If you do that, you’ll be left stran­ded without a job faster than you can drop your weights.

Teach­ing diving can be a phys­ic­ally and men­tally chal­langing job. At the end of a work day you might be expec­ted to help clean, repair and pre­pare equip­ment for the next day. If a boat doesn’t have an onboard com­pressor you’ll have to carry the tanks off the boat and get them filled. And not every course is going to be fun and easy. Once in a while you’ll get a stu­dent who just has to make your life hell, who knows everything bet­ter and just doesn’t listen to you whatever you try to do. It’s all part of the job and that job requires you to give the best ser­vice pos­sible. If you can’t deal with that you’re prob­ably bet­ter off as a customer.