You’ve always dreamed of becoming a professional diver since childhood or you just fell in love with scuba diving when you first breathed underwater during your dive or dive. your Open Water Diver. In any case, and no matter what makes you want to become a diving professional and make it your job, the PADI Divemaster course is a must have. Increase your knowledge and abilities and become a respected diver and guide for fans. It should be noted on this occasion that the Divemaster certification of the Scuba Schools International SSI, offers an experience and courses almost similar to those of PADI.
What is a PADI Divemaster?
The PADI Divemaster, is a professional diving certification given by the international organization PADI. This is the beginning of professional training in scuba diving. The purpose of this course is to provide you with the theoretical, practical and technical knowledge necessary to be a professional scuba diver. Everything happens in close collaboration with your dive instructor. The purpose of the PADI Divemaster Training is to develop your coaching skills so that you can supervise diving activities as well as assist instructors working with apprentice divers. At the end of this course, you will be able to take certified groups on fun dives. In addition, Divemaster certification is a prerequisite for passing the PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor and the PADI Instructor Assistant.
Prerequisites
To pass your Divemaster, you must meet several requirements. First of all, the diver must have, at least, 18 years old. In addition, it is necessary to hold the Advanced Open Water Diver, the Rescue Diver and have a recent first aid certification 24 month maxium. You must also have, at your disposal, at the time of registration, at least 40 logged dives. Finally, as a last requirement, you need a medical certificate signed by a doctor and dated at least 12 months indicating no contraindication to scuba diving.
The equipment
As usual, when passing this certification, you will use the basic equipment of the diver mask, snorkel, fins, regulator, buoyancy compensator, diving bottle … as well as diving accessories like a submergible slate, a diving knife, a compass and a dive computer. Moreover, it is strongly recommended to pass the certification with your own diving equipment. Indeed, familiarity with a type of scuba diving equipment allows the improvement of scuba diving techniques.
How to pass the Divemaster Course ?
The Divemaster training is divided into five stages:
Theory
The behavior and knowledge of the divemaster
You will learn to have the proper behavior of the divemaster. That is, what tasks do you need to do, how to work in a dive center, or how to behave with divers? In addition, you will know how to manage a group of diver as a whole through the whole process of diving organization, management of the team. You will also see how to handle problems at any time during the dive and in the event of unforeseen events. It’s sort of a deepening of the Rescue Diver training. Divemaster training allows you to know how to manage all types of dives whether deep, at night or wrecks etc … Finally, some tips are given to you on the business, or on how to sell dives and equipment but also on the legal part and the administration.
Diving science
This part becomes much more technical. Here you will learn the basic principles of diving through physical principles such as the laws of Dalton, Archimedes, Henry and Boyle and physiological principles with nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxicity, decompression sickness between other. You also review everything related to the theory of decompression through partial pressure, compartment, nitrogen etc… You also work on the aquatic environment and its risks with the current, injuries and treatments not to mention mastery of the diving equipment that you need to know perfectly.
Physical tests
These so-called physical tests are made to prepare you for emergencies. As a divemaster, you are a dive guide and divers are under your responsibility. You must therefore demonstrate your qualities through the tests presented below:
- Float for 15 min: Small twist, the last two minutes should be done with hands out of the water
- Timed events: Swimming 400 meters without mask and snorkel and swimming 800 meters with mask and snorkel
- Towing an unconscious diver over 100 meters: the event is marked between 1 and 5. You must tow the unconscious diver to the surface, without assistance and equipped with all the diver’s equipment
- Underwater equipment exchange or stress test: In this exercise, you are invited to exchange the bottles as well as the stabilizer, the mask, the fins and the ballast system under water while sharing the air of a single regulator. This test is scored from 1 to 5.
Practice exercises of the Divemaster Course
As their name suggests, these exercises are there to put your skills into practice. They take the form of scenarios and test your abilities against authentic cases.
Deep diving scenario at 40 meters
When you are Divemaster, you are certified able to supervise divers up to 40 meters. Therefore, one of the first scenarios that is proposed to you, is deep diving. You learn to do a reminder of the more advanced safety instructions by insisting on the safety stops, decompression etc … You descend thereafter to 40 meters. Without any visibility, you must be able to steer yourself without any problem and return to where you left.
Search Scenario and Recovery
This test happens in two parts. The first part is devoted to research. The goal is to find a small object underwater by adapting to the best scenario, conditions and equipment in your possession. The second part is recovery. It is a question of going up to the surface with an heavy object which does not exceed 10 kilos from the bottom.
Rescue scenario or rescue an unconscious diver
You will repeat an exercise already done during youre Rescue diver Course. In this scenario, it will be necessary to safely raise an unconscious diver to the surface and tow him to the beach or to the boat before practicing mouth-to-mouth while removing his equipment. Be sure to use the right technique to get it out of the water but also to give it only oxygen.
Emergency Action Scenario
The certified Divemaster diver must know how to handle an emergency situation. To verify this, during your training, your instructor will give you a scenario and you will need to establish an emergency action plan detailing all the most feasible and important phases.
Training exercises of the PADI Divemaster Course
Ensure the refresher of a diver
In your career as a trainer, you will probably have to take in charge divers who, although certified, have not been diving for some time. In this case, as a Divemaster, you must be able to provide them with an upgrade by recalling these few principles:
- Explain assembly and disassembly of equipment
- Pre-dive control
- The few basics: mask cleaning, buoyancy, emergency lift, use of the emergency source
Be able to teach Open Water course and another course
The divemaster has a certification, which authorizes him to help instructors. For the training to be complete, the diver must follow at least one full Open Water course, but also follow another training offered after the Open Water such as Advanced, Rescue or Nitrox.
Show the Open Water Exercises to perfection
Being a divemaster is a big step towards the rank of Open Water Scuba Instructor. Therefore, he must be able to demonstrate the exercises, the Open Water Diver, as a whole and in a perfect way which represents a solid base to possess.
Practical exercises of guide of palanquée
Preparation and management of a diving trip
In addition to the basic elements, you are taught to prepare a dive in every detail. The Divemaster must then prepare the boat, take into consideration the weather conditions, the time of year, the types of diver and dive.
Diving Briefing
The pre-dive briefing is mainly done to reassure but especially to guide the dive. The diving briefing contains key points that it is particularly important to remind all divers. The dive guide must, during a dive, present the site and its interests, the role, the signs to communicate, the fauna and flora, the depth and time of the dive and all that must be done in case emergency.
The mapping
A diver who gets his divemaster must be able, when he knows the dive spots, to draw and explain to the divers on which diving site they will perform the dive. This mapping exercise is done to learn how to make a diving map with the most relevant elements of diving such as name, orientation, topography, distances, depths etc.
The types of dives
The certified divemaster must know how to guide all types of dives. It is therefore necessary for divers to obtain their certification, to validate certain diving specialties such as deep diving, night, wreck or from the shore.
Guiding a group of divers
With a few exceptions for those wishing to pass the Divemaster for ego, the goal of all who pass this certification is to guide one’s own team through a defined process. It is therefore a question of making the best of all the knowledge stored since the Open Water Diver to prove that you are able to effectively manage a diving team.
What to do after the Divemaster?
What can you do as a Divemaster ?
Once your Divemaster certification is obtained, it is to be able to guide certified divers, to assist a diving instructor during one of his trainings, to make a refresher of a diver, to teach try dives.
Become an instructor
If you want to work in the diving industry, you must pass the Open Water Scuba Instructor PADI. This course is one of the components of PADI’s Instructor Development Course. Through this course, you will learn how to master the PADI Diver Training System through several exercises. When you are certified Open Water Scuba Instructor, you will be allowed to take charge of all PADI programs from Discover Scuba Diving to Divemaster. It is also a way to earn more money because the dives themselves are more expensive when done with someone who has completed the entire course.
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