PADI scuba divers??

[DownUnder.]

I intend on it.

Edited by DownUnder. on Thursday 13th August 01:30

[whythem]

http://www.learn-in-asia.com/index.htm

These guys will train you to instructor and beyond. then travel the world as a dive instructor.
16 years, 12,000+ dives, countles hours in the pool and classroom, dived all 5 oceans, all the worlds top 30+ dive sites,in all seasons, seen blue whales, whalesharks, great whites, bulls, mako, hammers, rays, macro. Dived wrecks (truc lagoon) caves cenotes mexico, altitude in Canada, extreme depth in the Bloo hole belize. Worked in bucked shops, freelance, luxury resorts, superyachts and dinghys, met thousands of people, shagged women from all races and nationalitys and backgrounds, drunk stuff, took stuff, had fights with stuff, seen stuff good and bad, deliverd CPR to two guys, been in a Thai jail, expierenced highs and lows, poverty and riches beyond belief. Passed over 700 OW students, introduced diving to children, disabled people, and even a few celebs.
If it were not for ill health, I would still be on a 180' superyacht cruising the carribean.
Dive officer on a privately owned superyacht is easily the best lifestyle in the world.
Go for it.

[pits]

Not a diver myself would love to have a go at it, but I know what I am like I would need a full aga diving mask, find it difficult to breath through my mouth.

I should do it, my uncle is quite well known around the world within the rescue diving stuff, he has done some crazy stuff, dived on the Piper Alpha on body recovery and to check the living compartment for when it was lifted out the water, he was also one of the 18 (I think there was 18) handpicked divers from around the world to work on the Kursk, and one of the very few divers allowed down to the Kursk whilst the cutting was in operation. Shame him, his misses and his 2 boys are such s

[whythem]

CyprusCraig said:

I passed my Rescue course today, 92% on the exam (not happy with some of the answers and the wording) but i understand where and why i went wrong, All the rescue scenarios went well not real problems apart from having to "sufer" from nitrogen narcosis pretending to talk to fish that was interesting and fun.

Get 2 days off until diving at Zenobia, can't wait, was gonna do a night dive tonight but i have to work instead, kinda sucks. 16 dives in total now and 8 hours bottom time!

I know i'm inexperiences and haven't got enough bottom time, but i like the idea of the challenge and i honestly do feel i am ready for it, if at any point i am not i will speak up and let others know that i'm not comfortable with the responsibilty that i have (i know someone is gonna say in a situation it might be too late for me to find out i'm uncomfortable).

There seems to be alot of diving knowledge on here so will take any advice but my mind is set on one thing and thats becoming a sucessful DM, so instead of telling me i'm not ready and uncapable (not intended to sound rude) just give me advice and tips on how to succeed

thanks

A great DM is one who can prempt every move and request that an instructor, and his students makes.
You need a minimum of 60 dives for your DM. During those dives take your specialities, deep, ENAX, search and recovery, wreck etc. Try to help out on some really crowed rescue diver courses, revise and revise your theory on all subjects. Take dive time to practive your 20 skills circuits again and again, learn and practice your signals. Volunteer to run the boat, dive briefs, boat briefs, charging tanks, preparing customers kit etc. (I have worked with too many instructors who have never been in a pump room, pumping 120 tanks for the next day. Dive in currents, low vis, cold water, hot water, overheads. Become an expert at navigation, nothing worse than repeatedly surfacing 100's of metres from the boat with tired or inexpeirenced divers. Get fit, lugging tanks up and down beaches, or passing them over the side at a high quay in a swell in 100% humidity is tiring work.
But most of all get out of the dive centre you are currently in. Although PADI allow you to become a rescue diver, any instructor worth his salt would not put you through without at least 30 dives, unless the shop is just making money. Move to a well researched PADI 5 star CDC with a resident Course director, and make him your friend. It is in places like this where the foundations of a top quality dive pro is laid. There are far too many DM's and OWSI out there who are trained by schools just dishing out certs, who never actually learn the job. Get it right, get the best jobs, and I promise you, its the best job in the world. (Instructor obviously)

[whythem]

Fezant Pluckah said:

CyprusCraig said:

Sorry....

My understanding is it is the first step onto the proffesional ladder of diving. Helping others and teaching other Divers how to improve, taking people out on DSD's.

Leading dives, planning dives, completing emergency plans.

Anything i have missed? (could google it, but just making conversation to be nice)

Hmmm..... that's not quite what I meant. Your reply sort of remind me of the first 45 seconds of this film clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRVy2IcUFL0
You're Second Lootenant Jake Jensen, aren't you?

I was thinking more along what you think you would do, on a day to day basis, as a fully-fledged divemaster. So, with this in mind, as I have a suspicion you have absolutely no idea what it entails, may I offer up the following scenario for you, please?

You (not any old person, but YOU) are a divemaster working on one of the day boats out of Cairns in Australia. The boat will be leaving the dock at 8.30 sharp and you're off to do two dives, morning and afternoon, with a spot of lunch in between. On board will be 10 paying divers; 6 of them will be in pairs and are intermediate divers (AOW, with perhaps 200 dives); 2 will be inexeprienced (OW with let's say 30 dives each); 1 will be a beginner and is out for their first try dive. The 10th person is very experienced instructor on holiday and has about 1000 dives under their belt, but has no dive partner. On board will be the skipper and hostess with the mostest, you and an instructor.

On this day the sun is shining, the seas are calm, there's no swell on the outside of the reef. Perfect dive conditions! You'll do two dives on a nice reef somewhere. The dives are to some extent irrelevant to this little excercise, but let's assume that both consist of a nice shallow reef top in 8-10m of water, sloping gently down to 30m and then plunging sheer into the abyss! However, no one is going to barph up a lung, get bent, get their arse chewed off by a tiger shark, pick up a textile cone and go "Ooooh, that's pretty", or kneel on a stonefish. It's all going to go spiffingly well, and when you return to the dock at 4.30 everyone will be happy.

So, it's morning, and you've crawled out of bed....

Tell me, as the divemaster on this boat, what your day would be, please...

I'd be REALLY interested to know!

Thanks Craig

(You may think this all pointless, but I can assure you it's not!)







And Ali, thanks for the kind words!

Edited by Fezant Pluckah on Thursday 13th August 01:09

Great thread. Id like to answer this one, the short answer is knackerd but happy with two successful dives. (did i get it right? did I?, did I?)
The long answer is as follows.
Check that days weather report. Check customers paperwork, check theres water, lunch, sunscreen, first aid and o2 on the boat. check customers rental kit, ask when all these expeirenced divers were last in the water with thier own kit.
On board, headcount, boat brief, seasickness pills, hand out water.
Dive Brief. Location, orientation, BWRAF, entry, exit, recall, time and bar/psi, emergency recall, topography, fuana and wildlife, hazards, have fun. Nobody dies on a PADI dive!!!!!
Sort out the dive teams as follows. 1. DSD and shop instructor dropped in confined water. 2. Split the three AOW's pairs as follows, most expeirenced AOW pair and least expeirenced AOW's teamed with the holidaying instructor (His fault owning up as as instructor). The remaining pair of AOW's lead by most expeirenced diver. 3. DM leads both inexpierenced OW, and single AOW pair. = 2x5+2x5+2 = 12 in the bloo.
Skipper counts divers in and divers out, preferabley noting entry/exit air and time.
Break for lunch, feed and water your clients, rub thier backs with sunscreen help them with thier log entrys, queiries etc, visually checking all for signs of illness, fatigue or reluctance, then maybe eat scraps for yourself.
Make sure everyone is happy with thier dive teams, the holidaying instructor will not want to dive with the airpigs on his hols. Above all make sure suffiecient surface interval before dive two, and that everyone changes their tanks, for dive two. Probably change the tank for the DSD as well.
Dive Two Check with skipper weather, tide, rips etc, then same procedure as before.
Chat up the hostess for a shag, and chat up the customers for your hard earned tips, on the way back to port.
Disembark passengers, checking decks for left customer kit, and that they havent made of with shop kit. Wave them cheerio, unload all the tanks/kit, wash all the kit in sweet water ready for the next day. Quick beer with clients and congratulate the DSD, before spending the rest of the night pumping tanks untill midnight, then shag the hostess, before getting to bed at 2am ready to rise for the same again at 6am the next day, and so on and so on. Thats the life.

[ali_kat]

Fezant Pluckah said:

DownUnder. said:

I know the answer!!

Please let Craig answer the question

What a shame WhyThem didn't Now we will never know how well Craig could have answered it on his own!

ETA - this has annyoyed me so much I've asked that it be edited to only show his short answer!! That is just not playing ball - people are trying to help him here and it is not fair of others to spoil it

Craig, a final word from me - don't see what Mel and Jim are saying as telling you not to do it. You need to see it as them being concerned about you beccause they have seen the 'bad' side and they don't want you to fail.

Jim - x

Edited by ali_kat on Thursday 13th August 10:18

[bluetone]

whythem said:

Spoiler

Nice one

[CyprusCraig]

My answer would not have been quite as complex as that.

i would have said.

Check weather reports, check diver information, talk to the divers on the boat find out who felt confident and decided from this who where to be buddy pairs, i would volunteer myself as a buddy pair with the beginner, the 6 AOW divers i would buddy pair according to who i think would be suitable together, also take into consideration equipment i would like to have atleast 1 computer per buddy pair. On the boat i would give a dive briefing explaing to everyone where we would be going, what to look out for, letting your buddy know when you have 100bar (T), explain about the 3 minute safety stop and ascending rate of no more than 18m/minute.

at lunch i would talk to the divers asking if they had any problems, or if they enjoyed it, give another dive breifing, help with equipment and start dive 2 keeping the same buddy pairs if people where happy with it.

when finished, help divers log their dives, signing and stamping etc... get back to the shore wash the equipment refill tanks, finished... hopefully???

That would have been my honest answer, it has no influence from google or one of the above mosts.

[bluetone]

A beginner on their first try-dive in Open Water??

[Dupont666]

bluetone said:

A beginner on their first try-dive in Open Water??

Eh?

I was a beginner and my first dive after 30-40mins of going through the basics in the pool was at 14m just off Gili Air in SE Asia.

Kind of freaky and fun all at the same time.

[Dan_1981]

Dupont666 said:

bluetone said:

A beginner on their first try-dive in Open Water??

Eh?

I was a beginner and my first dive after 30-40mins of going through the basics in the pool was at 14m just off Gili Air in SE Asia.

Kind of freaky and fun all at the same time.

All the tourist boats out of cairns will throw people will absolutly no experience in the water over the reef. No pool time, nothing.

[Dupont666]

Dan_1981 said:

Dupont666 said:

bluetone said:

A beginner on their first try-dive in Open Water??

Eh?

I was a beginner and my first dive after 30-40mins of going through the basics in the pool was at 14m just off Gili Air in SE Asia.

Kind of freaky and fun all at the same time.

All the tourist boats out of cairns will throw people will absolutly no experience in the water over the reef. No pool time, nothing.

Luckily i had the OH with me who has logged loads of hours in SE Asia waters so baby sat me on the first dive, but she stopped me playing with a leatherback that I wanted to stroke...

[mel]

I wouldn't tell him not to do it at all, maybe just not to do it the way he's intending or on the timescale he wants. The bottom line is that I was very lucky, the queen invested hundreds of thousands of pounds into my training, paid me very well once qualified, sent me all over the world from glorious beaches in the Indian Ocean to frozen cow sheds in the Falkland Islands, I had highs and lows from great jobs and really pretty grim ones. But the bottom line is I also had a fall back plan, I first and formost trained as an engineer I was then lucky enough to pass the aptitude, selection process and most importantly course (only 5% of applicants do) and then specialised in underwater engineering, the money is great, the experience better and the sights beyond comprehension. It then went wrong.

I was doing research work into rebreather mix algorithms on loan to a well known university who were working for a very well known commercial & recreational diving equipment manufacturer, I had oxygen toxicity at 30m and had only seconds to react before I went unconcious, I inflated my suit and shot to the surface while out for the count, my mouth was open but the hole wasn't big enough to let everything it needed to out and the spare air (or virtually neat oxygen) from my lungs made it's way out the bottom of my left lung and pretty much ended my career there and then. A lesser trained diver would have died no question about it, without the years of experience I had, my brain would not have been able to undstand what was going wrong quick enough or read the symptoms and to react, infact at your stage you probably don't even know that oxygen is toxic at depth.

I was just coming up to 30 years old then and had all these great ideas about working off shore, in deep saturation and earning 6 figures for 4 months a year, not just bumming around at dive resorts around the world shagging tourists and living off their charity, but it was taken away in a flash. After several months the tyre weld in my lung had pretty much done the best job it could, I function fully, have lung function tests well above average (the doc desribed my lungs as leathery old stretched bags thats are tough as boots, far bigger than average, and although down to 80% and with scar tissue on them, still working better than most peoples) but the scar tissue means I could never dive commercially again. Yes sure I've been back in the water since I just haven't told the full truth on a few dive resort forms, but that is because I really couldn't be arsed trying to explain the medical facts and details to them, so I lie, the bottom line is that yes I do know better than them what I can and can't do and I'm the one that has sat in consultation rooms with some of the world leaders in underwater medicine. Now days when my other half wanted to learn to dive I go along for a giggle and in reality to keep an eye on things, I show a PADI rescue card that I was once given by a friendly dive school and simply write down 5000+ for number of dives and "around 6 months" for accumulative bottom time. I still enjoy doing daft things like drifting by upside down wearing sunglasses and drinking from an old beer bottle I'd found while she coughs and splutters after doing her mask removal drills on her course, and it's true even at this stage there's always somthing new to see, but my heart or more accurately my lungs aren't in it anymore. So what happened? well I now work back in the private sector in engineering and manufacturing, I could because I had the core qualifications and a wealth of real life experience that gives me a huge amount of skills that transfer very well and these are the skills that are bred from being truely incharge of your own life, the lives of others and making decisions underwater that really count.

The truth for you is that as a PADI DM or even instructor qualification won't give you any of that, it will give you poorly paid, hard but enjoyable work around the world some of the time, it will enable you to constantly be saving for airfares to go to the next resort and look for more work, and that's not a bad thing for a few years, but you will never be a career diver or a professional anything on that path. By all means do it, it's a very good character building thing, at your age it will give you confidence and improve interpersonal skills that will all contribute to making you more employable and more attractive to women but use it as a stepping stone, if you really have the aptitude for it that you claim (and believe me very few do as I've seen 500+ scuba divers panic in week 2) then look at it as a career, look at the commercial schools and start building experience to use it to earn a living not just scrape a existance in the sun.

[bluetone]

Dan_1981 said:

All the tourist boats out of cairns will throw people will absolutly no experience in the water over the reef. No pool time, nothing.

Scarey.

[Fezant Pluckah]

OK, well, whythem does seem to have spoiled it somewhat, but hey ho. I’m not going to go over what he has said as it’s not bad, but I AM going to add a few extras.

Firstly, who’s going to go and pick them up from their hotel(s)? You. So you’d be up at sparrow fart to make sure the boat was ready (Though I would hope the skipper and hostess would also be doing that too.) You’d be off in your mini bus to collect them at predetermined times from their hotels, carry their bags to the bus, load them on, take them to the boat. The instructor will be looking after the novice re gear etc. As a divemaster you’re not qualified to take a first timer in the water, I am afraid.

You’d carry their bags to the boat. Allocated gear bins etc and ask if anyone needs help putting their gear together. You’d assist the 2 OW divers cos they’re a little unsure and it’s been a couple of months since they last doveded. Instructor and 6 AOWs & instructor need no assistance.

The 6 AOWs would dive as three pairs, the 2 OWs also, but obviously they’d be diving shallower (as per your briefing). You’d go with the instructor, and he can show you st He’s not there to nursemaid other less experienced divers, he’s on vacation. You’d basically brief accordingly for the level of diver there is.

After the dive, you’d change their gear to new tanks if required. Hand out towels for them to dry their between toes etc. Lunch. You may get some scraps if you’re lucky.

Same as above with second dive.

At the end of the dive, you’d assist in breaking down gear and rinsing off if it is required.

Back at dock you’d lug gear to van and return guests to their hotels.

Return to boat, unload tanks (if you’re really lucky the boat may have on board compressors and banks, so you don’t need to do that!) and take to dive shop to refill them. Rinse off rental gear and hang to dry. Check manifest for tomorrow, and ensure you have the correct number of tanks ready, plus any rental dive gear required. Leave messages in person or at hotels to confirm pick up times for tomorrow morning. Take filled tanks and dive gear to boat and stow securely.

Your day starts at 6 and finishes at about 9. And you’re pooped. Time for quick beer in your favourite backpacker watering hole. Schmooze up Ingrid, the blonde Swede, telling her you’re a divemaster on a dive boat, in the off chance you’ll get a shag. But she’s got a boyfriend. Bad luck Off to bed.

And you do this day in day out.

The reason I asked my question is because you have on numerous occasions intimated that you’re looking at this exercise as a good way to dive for free, by helping out at a dive shop in some kind of casual way. It doesn’t work like that. It’s fooking hard work, I know, I’ve done it. And I’ve worked on the big liveaboards out of places like Cairns where we could have as many as 25 novices doing their OW. We’d double dive students 4 times a day, do course work, sort out problems. We’d also have AOW courses to deal with too, so we’d have night dives, deep dives first thing in the morning, navigation dives. We’d have forms to fill in, log books to sign, boat logs to keep up to date. I’ve also worked on liveaboards in remote places where you’re dealing with maybe 12-16 divers doing 5 dives a day, and who need their tanks filling, their gear mending, problems solving. In my day the crew often didn’t have a cabin, and we slept on the sofas in the saloon when all the guests had gone to bed. And they’re on holiday so could stay up late, and all you want to do is go to bed, but you can’t because Dwayne and Betty from Boise Idaho are chatting with their new friends Hans and Ute from Stuttgart, and want to have a few beers and chew the fat. I worked on one boat in the 80s which used to base itself permanently at Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea for 3 months, and guests & supplies were flown in by seaplane and departing guests and rubbish went back on the return flight. We would go into port maybe 1 night every 3-4 weeks to fuel up, and pick up some other stuff. The banks could only fill about 10 of the 20 odd tanks that needed filling 4-5 times a day, and the rest had to be filled directly off the compressors. We just about managed to finish filling the tanks when it was time for a dive briefing and they’d all go back in the water. By the time they were out of the dive the banks would be full and we’d start all over again It was a 24 hour, 7 days a week, relentless grind.

It’s NOT some kind of romantic relax in a hammock under the palm trees kind of existence. I just want you to be aware of that. Yes, it is much cushier in a place like Indonesia or the Maldives or Thailand where labour is cheap and they can employ lots of people to lug tanks, fill them, and do a lot of the heavy duty legwork. But that’s not the case in places like Oz, or some parts of the Caribbean, or Florida or somewhere like that, because labour isn’t cheap and YOU have to do the work.

I am certainly not trying to put you off diving. Hell, I’d do myself out of a job if I did that to everyone interested in diving! But I feel you are getting ahead of yourself, and need to stand back and reassess what your aims are and how you will achieve them.
You’re green behind the ears in every respect. You’ve done a few dives, I assume with the same operator, so have no idea how others work, you have no idea of the marine ecosystem, how it functions, what to look at, show people. You probably don’t know the difference between and manta & a mobula or a platydoris & a chromodoris. How would you react if someone came up from a dive and 10 mins later pulled you aside and said they had a pain in their elbow that wasn’t there before. Or they had cut themselves on a sharp bit of coral.

There is more to divemastering than “guiding divers, planning dives and completing emergency plans”. Most of it is boring, hard graft, and you will not be diving for yourself, but for others.

I did this for a number of years in the 80s and burnt out. I became fed up with diving for other people’s pleasure and not my own. In fact I was getting decidedly bored of diving, too. I have now not done a dive for anyone else’s pleasure for almost 18 years. I only dive for myself now. I don’t dive as much as I used to, but when I do go diving, it is for me, not a beginner who’s where I was 30 years ago, or you were a few weeks ago.

You’re only 18. What’s the bloody hurry? Like I said a few days ago, go out and dive the world, but have some fun doing it. If you’re VERY lucky maybe someone will “employ” you without pay so you can get few dives in in exchange for lugging tanks etc. Personally, I’d prefer to pay for the dives and enjoy it.

Anyway, I really just get on with some work. I’m off diving for a week on Saturday and I have shed loads to do!

[whythem]

ali_kat said:

Fezant Pluckah said:

DownUnder. said:

I know the answer!!

Please let Craig answer the question

What a shame WhyThem didn't Now we will never know how well Craig could have answered it on his own!

ETA - this has annyoyed me so much I've asked that it be edited to only show his short answer!! That is just not playing ball - people are trying to help him here and it is not fair of others to spoil it

Craig, a final word from me - don't see what Mel and Jim are saying as telling you not to do it. You need to see it as them being concerned about you beccause they have seen the 'bad' side and they don't want you to fail.

Jim - x
Oop's it appears that I have put a few womens noses out by answering craigs question, apollogies.

However Fezant's question was far to complicated a scenario for an 18 year novice diver with 16 dives to answer with any degree of success, therefore setting craig up to fail. Not fair! and in no way encouraging to a young diver wishing to progress. However for a novice diver he did make a valiant effort, explaining how he would deal with the situation, and I believe could have the basic attitude to succeed as a DM with the right training. Rather than raining on the kids parade, perhaps people should offer a little more encouragement, and not focus on the negative so much.

Ali Kat. I am sorry my post annoyed you so much, I hope you can get over it.

Edited by ali_kat on Thursday 13th August 10:18

[whythem]

Dan_1981 said:

Dupont666 said:

bluetone said:

A beginner on their first try-dive in Open Water??

Eh?

I was a beginner and my first dive after 30-40mins of going through the basics in the pool was at 14m just off Gili Air in SE Asia.

Kind of freaky and fun all at the same time.

All the tourist boats out of cairns will throw people will absolutly no experience in the water over the reef. No pool time, nothing.

You don't need pool time, you only require "confined water" to a max depth of 5m.

[CaptainSlow]

CyprusCraig said:

I passed my Rescue course today, 92% on the exam (not happy with some of the answers and the wording) but i understand where and why i went wrong, All the rescue scenarios went well not real problems apart from having to "sufer" from nitrogen narcosis pretending to talk to fish that was interesting and fun.

Get 2 days off until diving at Zenobia, can't wait, was gonna do a night dive tonight but i have to work instead, kinda sucks. 16 dives in total now and 8 hours bottom time!

I know i'm inexperiences and haven't got enough bottom time, but i like the idea of the challenge and i honestly do feel i am ready for it, if at any point i am not i will speak up and let others know that i'm not comfortable with the responsibilty that i have (i know someone is gonna say in a situation it might be too late for me to find out i'm uncomfortable).

There seems to be alot of diving knowledge on here so will take any advice but my mind is set on one thing and thats becoming a sucessful DM, so instead of telling me i'm not ready and uncapable (not intended to sound rude) just give me advice and tips on how to succeed

thanks

Ok sorry to pick you up on this, unless things have changed you needed a total of 20 dives to complete the RD course.

I'm sorry but I think you're rushing things far too quickly, you need to get decent experience if you're going to make a good DM. Don't make yourself look stupid by going up too quickly, we had a DMT with more experience than you ask whether the pool fins go on specific feet, obviously I told him it specified which is which on the bottom before disapearing and leaving him to it. Do lots of recreational dives in between courses to build up that experience because things do go wrong in diving and you must be able to react in the right way, people will be relying on you.

When I did my training I did one step per year with plenty of pleasure dives in between. My RD training scenario completed with me doing the lift, rescue breathing and towing the "victim" in front of a couple of hundred spectators on a hot August Sunday at Guildy. My DM training had me in Bovy harbour is the driving rain herding up the students and doing exercises in poor vis. Most weekends were spent jumping off boats in the English channel for pleasure dives and I have been fortunate enough to dive across the world including Cyprus. I can tell you Cyprus was one of the easiest places to dive.

Having been diving now for seven years, hundreds of dives and "up" to DM level I can tell you I'm still learning and when comparing to their UK trained equivalents divers in warm water are generally display poor diving techniques and that includes the DM and Instructors.

Anyway enjoy diving and don't be in too much of a rush to go up the ranks because believe me you'll not want the extra responsibility if you're unable to deal with it.

Safe Diving

[Fezant Pluckah]

Maybe my scenario was a little extreme, whythem.

But the point I was trying to get across was that it's not a walk in the park, it's damn hard work, and I don't think Craig appreciates that. I reckon he sees himself as some kind of modern-day Robinson Crusoe, relaxing on the beach with his cold beer, the waves lapping the golden sand, the sea breaking gently on the reef off shore and him doing the odd guided dive for paying punters.

He needs to get that notion out of his head

[whythem]

Fezant Pluckah said:

Maybe my scenario was a little extreme, whythem.

But the point I was trying to get across was that it's not a walk in the park, it's damn hard work, and I don't think Craig appreciates that. I reckon he sees himself as some kind of modern-day Robinson Crusoe, relaxing on the beach with his cold beer, the waves lapping the golden sand, the sea breaking gently on the reef off shore and him doing the odd guided dive for paying punters.

He needs to get that notion out of his head

Point taken, and I completely agree with your assesment of the job. Too many people enter the trade with an unrealistic view of the job. This is why I recommended that he gets away from his current dive shop, which appears to be rushing him through paid education in a quest for certs rather than concentrating on the quality of his education, and preparing him for life as a useable DM.
However, (PADI language I think there has been too much emphasis on the negative aspects of the job and not enough on the positive sides. If he can do maybe a year as a DM working in a busy CDC, it is quite resonable to see him working on some decent size yachts, maybe building a freelance book, with which can lead to a very very good lifestyle while earning very good money. I lived on a 12million pound yacht which we took around the world twice, without seeing the owner once in two years, he just used to phone up and ask where we were, great salary, expenses, food and diving. A lifestyle which many billionaires would be jealous of.
Mel, +1 for the Pulmonary embolism club