Teaching scuba in the world at large is on a far more commercial footing than the club-oriented style. many divers will do almost all their training through a diving school, often while on holiday and with only the frequency of two or three weeks in a year. Even after many years of scuba diving, it is not unusual for them to dive with an instructor of guide from the dive school, dive resort or dive centre and to have fairly low skill levels in diving organizing, planning, leading, navigating and problem solving. Divers usually own part of their scuba diving equipment and only handful will own their complete set of dive gear.
Roles of Dive Center
It is common for dive schools, dive resorts or dive centres instructors to spend long period of their time arranging and leading dives for groups of four or five divers taking on the responsibilities and role of a dive guide on top of being an dive instructor. These holiday divers (resort, leisure, recreational, etc types of divers) are looking for a safe, enjoyable underwater experience, often year after year, without the commitment demanded by advanced (professional) scuba training programmes.
This nature of the scuba diving activity requires the dive operators to perform and function in an organized manner to ensure recreational divers are properly provided for, logistically and safety wise. Part of those mentioned are to ensure proper air fills, proper equipped dive boats, regularly checked and maintained scuba equipment and well planned dive itinerary.
Generally, dive schools are better equipped in terms of classroom, pool facilities, scuba equipment and administration wise comparing to free lance (non full time dive instructors). They are often run in conjunction with a retail facility offering full range of scuba equipment for sale, hire and service.
City and Island Dive Center
Dive centers situated in inland areas (city based dive centers), and those located at coastal sites are different by nature. Those city based dive centers are usually more personal with the students divers and diver customers, due to the fact that they are usually closer to divers’ residence, they also act as a source of information for scuba diving, dive travel information. Coastal or island based dive centers are usually visited by divers while they are on holidays which tend to have more come and go divers, these dive centers are usually very familiar with the surrounding and nearby dive sites. Island based dive center usually do not provide comprehensive dive retail.
Dive professional of Dive Center
The notion that instructing professionally in a dive school is glamorous and easy life is illusory. Dive centers instructors are always on demand, and can be required to dive several times a day, and just when you you can rest there is a promotional evening or someone wanting a night dive!
Resort (Island based) dive centers often require instructors to speak an additional language, as their customers may be drawn from many countries. As customer divers can have a variety of previous experience, it is essential for dive centers instructors to have a very open approach and a wide knowledge of alternative training systems. Awareness of the major diver certification agencies and major national federations (PADI, NAUI, SSI, GUE and so on) training schemes will be an obvious advantage.
Island based dive centers and their staff team usually are very involved in the environmental protection activity, to them the underwater is the extension of their home. These responsible dive operators are very particular how divers interact the dive sites, some even ban non-eco friendly practices like touching or shooting marine life. (Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles)
Regardless of these additional pressures, teaching in a dive center can be a very rewarding experience. In particular it will help to improve your communicative skills and your understanding of the commercial pressures of being part of a business which survives on its reputation and customer satisfaction.
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