One day you get on a plane again with a group of familiar divers. The direction of the trip is the reefs of the Red Sea. In front of you are hundreds of questions about the reef, steaming corals, beautiful colorful fish, “menacing” moray eels and maybe even sharks? But most importantly, there is the sound of the sea, the blue depths and the reef with myriads of fish in front of the whole group.
Welcoming a new arrival to the base is a group of divers on a diving vacation in Croatia. In a few hours you will know each other’s names, learn about each other’s experience and diving skills and you, the Divemaster, will be doing your first pre-dive briefing.
Or maybe two of your friends ask you what it’s like to be a diver and you go to do an intro for them in Deepspot in a week. Maybe even though you are only an amateur Divemaster, you will have new diving friends for diving trips?
Maybe one day, as a Divemaster, watching instructors conducting training you will want to go all the way and become an instructor. After all, Divemaster is a vocation, but instructor is already a profession.
A divemaster is a diving guide, an instructor’s assistant for training, a “qualified” dive base staff. Someone who knows how or can quickly learn how to fill cylinders at a given dive base, select divers for diving equipment, but also lead a dive group on an underwater excursion or assist an instructor during training. Amazing and very diverse skills and so is the Divemaster course. Each successive class deals with new skills. Supervising divers underwater, assisting with an OWD course, leading a Discover Scuba Diving program or being a boat dive leader.
A divemaster is also a person who inspires tremendous confidence in divers and at the same time works closely with them at the dive base. Often a diver prefers to ask the Divemaster rather than the Instructor about something because the Divemaster is “closer” to the divers and the instructor “God of Diving” is not sure what he will do if you ask him.
To become a Divemaster you need to have a lot of experience and diving skills. Training above the basic level and a diving rescue course, as well as training in typical first aid, and finally a minimum of 60 dives.
However, what is most important is that in order to become a Divemaster you have to like taking care of people, have fun with them and have the right attitude related to responsibility, due to the need to ensure the safety of divers. A divemaster is someone on whom not only the pleasure but also the safety of diving depends. Skills are important, but how a Divemaster approaches preparing for a dive and then how he or she conducts the dive is the basis for avoiding problems.
Divemaster in extreme situations must have a sufficiently high level of rescue skills. It’s as much about first aid skills on shore or aboard a boat as it is about rescue skills underwater or on the surface of the water.
The order and organization of the Divemaster course activities is quite arbitrary, but in total it includes learning theory, conditioning exercises, diving exercises, caring for and assisting divers during training and finally something that many Divemasters find most enjoyable – being a guide during tourist dives.
During the Divemaster course, different areas of knowledge and skills are mastered.
While learning online and practicing with an instructor, future Divemasters learn the basics of diving physics and physiology, the construction and principle of diving equipment, knowledge of the aquatic environment and the principles of dive planning due to decompression limits.
During the pool classes, the candidate’s swimming and diving technique and fitness are tested and developed. Swimming 800 meters in ABC (fins, mask and snorkel), 400 meters of swimming or 100 meters of towing a diver. A very interesting exercise is lying on the surface of the water for 15 minutes. The exercise demonstrates how breathing technique helps with prolonged lying/resting on the surface.
The diver also learns how to perform various diving exercises and this is done in demonstration quality. This is needed later when conducting training. When assisting with training, the Divemaster often has to demonstrate skills such as changing equipment underwater, blowing a mask, practicing buoyancy or responding to typical emergency situations.
The next skill that a future Divemaster masters both in the pool and in open water is supervising divers during training. Simulated or real situations from the OWD diving course or courses for higher grades show what problems he may encounter and teach him how to prevent and, as a last resort, respond to emergency situations.
Future Divemasters must also master such skills as searching for and retrieving objects from underwater and conducting and supervising tourist deep dives, i.e. those between 30 and 40 meters. A Divemaster candidate can either do a Deep Diving specialization and an Exploration and Extraction specialization before or during the course, or pass the Deep Diving and Exploration and Extraction workshops during the course. Pulling out a lost anchor or a small outboard motor is something that can always happen later in a Divemaster’s career.
However, the Divemaster’s Course, is firstly an approach to the students and divers. Something seemingly intangible however very important. It is a certain attitude that distinguishes a good Divemaster from a poor one. Divers often ask or even complain.
“That’s enough 60 dives to be a Divemaster?”
But from observing several hundred Divemasters trained or met at bases, I can say that whether someone is a good Divemaster; depends very little on the number of dives done before the course. Also, the course, although very important, is only a starting point. It can be said that what kind of Divemaster someone is depends on what kind of person he is and the course only provides him with some tools to support him in his work.
