How to know if becoming a dive professional is what I want to do for a living

It’s the dream everyone’s chasing – to have a job they love where working doesn’t actually feel like work. Taking the chance to combine passion and a career. Earning a professional rating is a life changing experience. Ditching your office and change it into the width of the ocean sounds like an amazing adventure.

Get an idea about how it is to work as a dive professional

Most people don’t start scuba diving and know that they want to be a dive professional ahead. Its more that with the first plunge into the water, they suddenly realize that diving is something they want to do for the rest of their lives. What start’s as a hobby becomes a consuming passion. However, you should think it through. Is diving really something you can put up with six out of seven days, sometimes more, most of the time? Being a dive professional is hard work, and not only fun diving and watching cute little fish.

In the beginning being a dive professional often seems like an amazing idea but your body needs to be able to cope with it. If you have any health problems like asthma, mental health problems or heart problems, a career in diving might not work for you. Furthermore, you should be aware that you are responsible for the safety of your clients. The ocean has an immense power which shouldn’t be underestimated. When you make the ocean your office you should be always aware of that and be able to concentrate and stay calm under pressure.

One of the advantages of diving is the chance to get to know all sorts of people from all over the world! Of course, you should be the social type and also much patience is needed from time to time. Everybody who works in a customer service industry has more than one experience with rude customers that treat you with no respect. In any case you should remain professional and care always about your customers’ safety.

In the end it’s all about sharing your experiences and your passion for diving. Additionally to this, raising awareness for the ocean environment in your students is a plus. It is always satisfying and motivating to certify new divers but also to show them how amazing the underwater world is and why we need to protect it.

Choose the right scuba job – there is more than being an instructor

Recreational diving is the biggest sector of the diving industry. Even as an instructor there are different options –  for example working at a retail diving facility, on a cruise ship, in a resort… You don’t need to climb to the top to get a lot of possibilities.

However, scuba diving offers you an even bigger variety of job opportunities as there are more fields than recreational diving –  for example commercial, public safety or research. You could work in the boating industry, marine conservation, as an underwater photographer…  As you can see, if you love scuba diving but don’t want to be an instructor there are many other possibilities.

How and when did you know that diving was the thing for you? Or did this inspire you to think about becoming a dive professional? Let us know all about it in the comments.