PADI Divemaster Course
Sometimes taken during an Internship at a dive centre or as a 2 week course in a dive resort or with your local dive center, this course is challenging that is without doubt, its your first step on the dive professional ladder. During the course you will have to pass 8 written theory exams (multiple choice) as well as a number of open / confined water evaluations and some stamina exercises that test your swimming ability
This course starts to build you into a dive leader, giving you the opportunity to be able to look after other divers during dives and allows you to assist other Instructors with other divers.
Divemaster Internship
The Divemaster Internship can be split roughly into three areas: dive theory which consists of 5 exams; physics, physiology, RDP theory, this is the part most people have the most problems with, but as long as you take it nice and slow there's nothing too difficult here.
The second part I would call confined water, although that itself is split into various parts: you have "stamina tests" 400 m swim, 800m mask snorkel fins, 100m tired diver tow and 15 minutes treading water, skill demonstration where you will learn how to demonstrate all 20 skills to instructor level and you will also take part in a minimum of 5 Confined Water Dives with Students like Open Water Course Students and Discover Scuba Diver participants.
We state that you must do 'a minimum of 5', as 5 are required by standards - but we encourage Divemaster candidates, especially those who intend to further their education into the instructor ranks to attend as many as possible as it in only in confined water that student divers really learn how to do the skills / dive in the first place.
The third part of the course is the Open Water Training part where you will participate with 5 Open Water Training Dives; one with Open Water Students, one with either a Rescue, AOW or Specialty and three more, again depending on your time frame, the longer you have and the more you courses and dives you can assist on the more you are likely to learn.
There are various other parts to the DM course; you have a map you need to make, an Emergency Assistance Plan which is the plan you would use for evacuation to the Chamber in your local area, and you need to do an equipment exchange underwater, which is good fun. The sections of teh course do not run in any set order but are integrated into the DM course as you go along so what you do when exactly will depend to a certain extent on how busy we are and what courses we have running.
