Becoming a PADI Divemaster
A Journey from Landlubber to Divemaster
Written by Lasse S. Oszadlik, PADI divemaster
It’s 30°C and the sun is bombarding my ginger skin with scorching rays. I’m slightly dehydrated and in very new surroundings, with scrap metal welded tricycles swarming around, busy and bee-like, and thousands of people trading, smiling and doing their everyday stuff. Inside the van the driver expertly maneuvers the lawless streets and after a good 50 minutes I see it – the black and blue sign with the double diver-ok-signs, the golden gate to MCP (or rather the dirt road and slightly muddy entrance, but salvation seldom comes clad in gold and glory).
I have never dived before and I have planned to become a PADI Divemaster. The decision was spontaneous and when a random ad on facebook appeared before me with MCP’s information, the decision was easy – if I ever would become a diver, I might as well do some good for the environment in the mean time. Rarely doing things to a minimum, the divemaster course was the only option for me, and so it was agreed between our two parties, MCP and me.
I was warmly welcomed in the botanical garden premises of the MCP camp by the widest smile and friendliest Irish lady you could ever imagine, and her name is spelled as weirdly as her hospitality is great. Aoibheann [Efin] showed me, and the three other arrivals around the camp and told us all the basic information we would need to know for our stay here. I had chosen 12 weeks for my stay, enough time to do the Divemaster Course and also contribute to the important cause that MCP has fought for over 2 years now.
The next day training began, and I was met by Chase, an American instructor with extraordinary teaching skills. By his side was a fellow divemaster to be, Spanish Mar, who should become one of my greatest influences in my early training. The open water course and the advanced open water course flew by in short time, and I learned a great deal from the professional and very entertaining duo of Chase and Mar, who, with their uncompromising expertise and insisting on having a great time, showed me diving as good as it can and should be: Safe, skillfull, fun, and eyeopening to the wonders of our blue planet (you may read the last part with the voice of David Attenborough for full effect).
Onwards toward glory and wetsuits I was met with delight the prospect of taking my Rescue diver course under the supervision of the Irish Smile. Together with me in this course was a man I should become very much acquainted to over my next 8 weeks. Antonio Yucor, or Tony, is a man whose like I’ll probably never meet again. Never have I had the joy of such a truly happy attitude towards life, work, the people around you, and especially the environment of which he of all understood the importance and worth of fighting for. Tony works in the government of the Philippines, and part of his work is to demarcate the Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s), which is strenuous, never ending work, mostly at depths of 25-30 meters. But no matter the day, the weather, the problems or (sometimes) the lack of results due to many unforeseen or unmanageable occurrences, the man never stopped smiling, laughing, joking, singing and being an absolute maniac in the best possible sense. Thank you Tony! The Philippines thank you, the coral reefs thank you and I thank you dearly.
The rescue diver course went by with lots of hard exercise and a pretty steep learning curve! It was hard but fun but supremely useful, and afterwards I felt like a better diver, more focused now on my fellow dive buddies and the safety of the dive as a whole instead of just me and my own buoyancy control.
A part of the Rescue Diver course was first aid and emergency management. Quickly the inside jokes of “protection” and “my name is your name” started, and after two days of practice, we felt ready to handle the most common, as well as a fair few uncommon, injuries one can expect before, during and after a scuba dive.
And thus I became a Rescue diver within my first 3 weeks, now the Divemaster course was looming in the horizon, but since I was still very green in diving, I had to gain some more experience and up my number of dives before starting, and what better way to gain experience than by some environmental work.
Mapping divesites and demarcating MPA’s became my primary duties. I actually had quite some experience with navigation from my stint in the army, and so mapping dive sites came natural to me. With great training and sparring from French Laura and her inspiring excitement for frogfish and the frogfish dance (imagine your arms down your side, slightly bend elbows and hands turned 90 degrees, away from your body, palms down and then doing a kind of boogie/swing movement in your arms and hips, like patting on the heads two small kids who can’t stay still) I became well used to the different dive sites and found a real passion for working with specific goals and procedures underwater.
Demarcation we’ve talked about, but it’s worth mentioning again the importance of this. The work is done primarily, almost exclusively, by the Bantay Dagat (watchers/guardian of the sea in Visayan, the local dialect). They drop sinkers at the outskirts of protected reefs and areas, and then people like Tony swim down, singing and smiling, and attach ropes with floaters to the sinkers, so that fishermen and other sea bobbing people can recognize no-go areas in which not to fish. That is important work! And they do it with such joy and excitement, that it is all that much more impressive.
Some time passed, I had upped my number of dives considerably and I was now considered ready to begin the Divemaster course and become a Divemaster Trainee, a DMT.
My instructor was to be a fellow Dane. Daniel proved to be what the Divemaster course promises, a mentor and a good friend besides a highly qualified scuba instructor. We embarked on our journey towards mastery with much enthusiasm and many inside jokes.
On top of the regular training and theory, various divemaster duties were to be taken care of to become a skilled and experienced professional member of the dive community. The duties mostly included logistics such as filling tanks for the thirty or so MCP divers, who all needed 2 tanks a day; Securing water, snacks and spare equipment for each truck going to their separate location to do various surveys and tasks. The duties, trivial as they might seem, were fulfilling in the sense that there was always something to do, and the responsibility immediately given to very motivating. It is after all why you become a divemaster, right? – To make sure other divers have the best time possible. ‘Best’ meaning everything from fun to, in this setting especially, effective.
Weeks passed by with required drills and dives but also extracurricular activites to harden and develop me as a Divemaster to be. This really touches the essence of diving and dive training at MCP: The fact that this place exist first and foremost for the protection and well being of the environment, thus requiring excellent divers and diveskills from both employees and volunteers to 1) conduct the most accurate surveys and 2) not damaging the fragile aquatic life in the process. To make excellent divers for MCP activities, the standard programmes issued by certifying agencies are just not enough. Therefore extra training is required and the end result, frankly, is formidable divers doing formidable work. This environment ensures the divemasters work even harder to set the example and have the knowledge and experience to guide and further develop the already accomplished volunteer divers.
As a newly minted professional member of the dive community, a Divemaster, I felt ready to read the final chapter of my MCP novel. I would now do more mapping and demarcating, assist with courses, while also unofficially functioning as sort of a go-to guy for new volunteers and divers for help and advice. At this point, some new DM trainees had started their journey and embraced the duties I once did, and I was free to delve more deeply into the essence of being a MCP volunteer diver and not a MCP volunteer trainee diver. This suited me well, and as new volunteers and especially new divers came to the camp, I could confirm my training was effective by helping with all sorts of issues, based on a large knowledge base on diving and diving equipment, and, also importantly, I confirmed my choice of becoming a Divemaster at Marine Conservation Philippines was the right choice for my diving career.
As I kept learning from helping and advising new divers, I was reminded of a profound truth about diving – you should stop learning and developing. I’m not sure what’s next for me? Perhaps technical diving? But you can always improve on something, and if you get to gain experience and become a better diver while helping others do the same, you could not ask for a more amazing feeling of having purpose in diving.
/Lasse