Deciding to complete your Divemaster training is one thing. Whether you are wanting to complete Divemaster training to become a PADI Professional and work part time or full time in the industry, or to become more confident in the water, deciding who to complete the training with is another thing altogether.

If you have completed the prerequisite courses with a local dive centre and they don’t offer this next level of training, maybe ask them for some recommendations. They no doubt work with, or will recommend other centre’s that will be right for you.

If you don’t feel that your local dive centre can give you the Divemaster training you are after, then you need to look around. But make sure you do your research. Every PADI Dive Centre has the ability to offer Divemaster training, but not all are created equal.

Look for a PADI Dive Centre with the highest PADI accreditation. This means they have worked to deliver the highest level of training to their candidates and have been recognised as such.

This would be a centre with the PADI Career Development Centre(CDC) title. These centre’s focus on creating PADI Divemaster’s that will work long and fulfilled careers, and those that will be the most successful in the industry. Even if you are just wanting to become a better diver, completing your training with these centres will ensure you get the most from the instructors/trainers.

If you can, avoid the temptation to travel overseas and complete the training – unless the centre has a reputation to back it. Many overseas travel destinations looking appealing with warm, clear tropical water, and sound like a lot of fun – and that’s generally what happens. You spend more time having fun, rather than getting the training you are after. Many PADI Divemaster’s have come to complete their PADI Instructor training with me and have been quite shocked at how far behind my local candidates they are. Even though courses are the same from country to country, not all centres and instructors are. We have to be honest. Many instructors working in these foreign destinations are treating their time there as a holiday too. Do your research. Look at past candidate reviews. Look at what you are getting. And think about where the training is being conducted – if you complete your training in warm tropical destinations, you probably won’t get the experience from shore diving in surf, surge, waves, limited visibility etc…. all these things make you a better diver, and as such, a better trained Divemaster. This will then let you travel and work with confidence, as both as a more experienced diver and Divemaster (if that’s the end goal) in pretty much anywhere in the world.

Once you have determined your end goal, work back from this to set yourself up well. This will get you the appropriate training to ensure that you are the most experienced diver you can be now.

 Read what a range of Divemastes thought of their DM training:

By Jamie Miller