Divemaster Certification

I had not dived for two years. The last time was the diving course back in Israel, and that is how long it had been when I got into the water at Koh Tao. We started in the pool. All the basic drills you do on the course — clearing the mask, taking the BCD off, the whole list — until the instructor had seen me do all of it. After that I had lunch, and the dive itself waited for the next day. I did it with Onyx Divers. I found them through WhatsApp groups of Israelis travelling in the east, called a few places, and they were the ones that impressed me most. That turned out later to be the best decision I made on the trip. In the water it felt great. I was a competitive swimmer all through my childhood, so I am generally very comfortable in water — the movement and the fin kicks come naturally. What was not good was my air consumption, which was really high. That was the thing I had to work on, so the dives would be longer and I would enjoy them more. From the logbook: one dive · 40 minutes under · 10 m · Sairee Reef

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We did two dives. On Koh Tao you always dive from a boat, so every trip out is two dives, usually at two different sites because each one has different fish. There are two departures a day — one at seven in the morning and one at twelve — and a night dive is rare. After that long without diving, what I had missed was the quiet down there. The only thing you hear is your own breathing. And I was lucky with the conditions: really good visibility and almost no current. We saw huge schools of fusiliers, and swam into one of them. They closed around us from every direction. Just incredible. The sea is a different thing entirely from a pool. A pool is a controlled, forgiving place — if something happens you are at the surface in a second. In the sea you can be at 30 metres, and if there is a problem and you panic and cannot remember how to deal with it, your life is genuinely at risk. Before I even arrived I had arranged a divemaster package with the club: you pay up front and get unlimited dives with them for life. That is what let me build up to 40 dives without paying a large sum for each one. They also told me in advance that I would need the rescue course, so we planned the days so that I could get everything done by the end of the month and start the divemaster. From the logbook: 2 dives · 1:43 under · to 17.4 m · Hin Wong Bay, HTMS Hanhak Sattru 312

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The four days broke down like this. On the first day we did the first aid and CPR course, and all the theory for the days after it. The first aid course is like a day of army first-responder training, only with the things that are specific to diving — what happens if someone drowns, that sort of thing. The second day was in the pool. Rescue drills: demonstrating, and dealing with an unconscious diver. On the third day we went out to sea and did the same things where there are waves, the water is deeper, and it is not a controlled environment. On the fourth day there is something called a Hell Dive. The instructors take you to an area with nothing around it — no coral, nothing you can damage — and start messing with all your gear. They pull your regulator out and see that you can find it. They shut your tank and see that you can open it again. Like that, for several minutes. And on the same day, the rescue test: find an unconscious diver underwater using the search pattern they taught us, bring them to the surface the right way, then swim them to the boat and get them aboard with no help at all. It is also the hardest drill on the course. While you are swimming with them you also have to strip their gear off and keep their head above water, and when you reach the boat ladder you have to get them onto you and climb up with them. Most of the drills were fairly simple for me. I am relatively strong and I felt quite confident in the water, and I was sure I would manage all of it. I did the course with another guy of thirty and a woman my own age, and we practised everything on each other — which really helped, both to understand the problems and to learn from each other's mistakes. I think the rescue course is the most important course you can do as a diver. Most people will never be in a situation where they have to rescue someone — and if it does happen, it will usually be the instructor or the divemaster diving with the group. But it teaches you how to genuinely look after your own gear and use it properly, and what to do even when you have no air. They go over every incident and every problem that can happen, show you how to solve it, and drill you on it relentlessly. It raised the level I dive at enormously. In the end you want to feel confident in yourself and not rely on other people every time — sometimes you arrive somewhere and the instructors are not the most professional. So the important thing is knowing how to set up your own gear, how to be comfortable, and what to do if something stops working. Just a feeling of being at ease in the water. From the logbook: 6 dives · 3:05 under · to 26 m · Sairee Reef ×2, Japanese Gardens, White Rock, Chumphon Pinnacle, HTMS Suphairin 313. There is no dive at all on 20 May — that is the first aid and theory day. The rescue course and the first aid were both taught by Rotem, and both certifications are issued in his name.

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After the rescue course I had about twenty dives. Some of the course dives — the ones that were not in the pool — count, and you can put them in the logbook. And I needed to get to forty. I dived between two and four times a day, closer to four, because I really wanted to be done with it as fast as possible. It came out at about twenty dives in six days, from the 24th to the 29th. I started the divemaster on the 30th. After the rescue course I felt much more inside the water, so I enjoyed it far more and I also had a lot more things of my own to work on. How to hold buoyancy better, how to breathe better. Most of them I asked the instructors about myself, to improve and get as professional as I could. My whole aim that week was to work on my air consumption, and slowly I did manage to improve it — with the pointers and the tips the instructors gave me. That week I also got to some of the most beautiful sites in the area, two of them Chumphon and Southwest. I saw really big schools of fish there, and I had several days with very good visibility and almost no current. I genuinely enjoyed the diving. From the logbook: 18 dives in six days · 14:06 under · to 24 m · White Rock ×5, Southwest Pinnacle ×2, Japanese Gardens ×2, Twins, Hin Pee Wee, No Name Pinnacle, Sairee Reef, Chumphon Pinnacle, Junkyard, Aow Leuk, HTMS Sattakut 742, Red Rock

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The course splits into two main parts. The first is learning with Shoham, the instructor who is also the club manager. The morning starts with a theory lesson about diving, three or four hours of it. Then a lunch break, and then the drills in the pool or the sea that the divemaster needs. Days start around nine and finish around five. How long it takes varies from group to group — the average, if there are several of you, is two weeks. It took me one, because I was one-on-one with him, so we simply arranged to do more each day. All the theory, Science of Diving included, I did with him. I found the theory lessons a bit hard, but they were done in a really enjoyable atmosphere — on some days we even went and did them in a café. The aim of the instructor teaching it is to give you as much information as possible and tie it as closely as he can to real scenarios and the real things that happen while diving, and Shoham taught it extremely professionally. The second part is exactly like an internship. You join groups of people doing their Open Water and Advanced, help the instructors with whatever they need, and watch and try to learn from other people's mistakes. That is the stage you learn the most from and the one that is the most fun. You understand how the instructors think and how they teach a group, and you get much closer to them. And you understand what the average diver taking a course actually looks like — how to solve their problems, how to give them tips. If you want to work in this later, that is where you start noticing those small things and pick up the tools to handle mistakes. Then comes the part where you prepare for the exam. The exam is leading a whole fun-dive day, because in Thailand the people who take you on fun dives are the divemasters. A day like that goes like this: meet at the club around half past six, check and fit all the gear. At about seven you get on a small boat that takes you out to the big one, and from there two dives. Back in, and around half past twelve the same thing again — small boat to the big boat, and another two dives. What they examine, and the most important part, is how you give the safety briefing before the dive. Hand signals, whether there is a current, what the visibility is, how to behave in the water. What you are really doing is giving a shared language between whoever is leading the group and the people with him, giving them confidence and showing them they are in safe hands — and if there is fear or worry, trying to take as much of it down as you can. That is where you show how professional you are. Then during the dive the instructors examining you throw scenarios and problems at you that you have to solve. And at the end there is the part after the dive — a debrief of what happened, what could be better, what to keep, what we saw, and whether they had questions. There were always fish they had not been able to identify. How long all of it takes depends on the pace you want. The second part averages two weeks, and that is how I did it — diving a lot every day and joining several teams. You can also stretch it over longer and do other things alongside. I genuinely enjoyed the learning, and that is what I was after: to dive better, to see how far I could take it, to go deeper, to hear about new things I could do, and to get as much confidence in the water as possible. From the logbook: 35 dives · 24:30 under · to 29 m · seventeen sites, most often White Rock ×6, Twins ×3, Aow Leuk ×3, Chumphon Pinnacle ×3 and HTMS Sattakut 742 ×3 What it produced in certifications. The divemaster is not one card. Science of Diving came with it, and the professional final exam, and Snorkel Instructor — an active divemaster may teach and certify the snorkelling programme. Along the way the recognition levels accumulate on their own, without being studied for: Specialty Diver, Advanced Specialty Diver, and Master Diver, which is the highest rating in recreational diving. Some of them are dated 2 and 3 July, after I had already left the island. That is not something I did there — it is just the gap between finishing and everything being approved.

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I was not sure I would have time to do it beforehand, because my schedule was quite short — which is also why I did the divemaster itself really, really fast. I said that only if I managed to finish it would I do the deep and wreck course. On the deep we went down to 31 metres. You really can notice the colours starting to disappear and turn much greyer, and your air consumption goes right up. On the wreck course I dived two of the wrecks around Koh Tao, and it was the most interesting course I managed to do in the time I was there. They teach you how to navigate inside a ship. You navigate with a line: how to tie it to objects in the wreck so it stays anchored, and how you move along it. And the whole business of buoyancy becomes far more critical — you have to be properly balanced so you do not kick up sand, so that you keep good visibility inside the ship. I did the two courses together, and that is what lets you go deeper and explore the wreck more. The wrecks at Koh Tao are relatively deep — they start at around 20 to 25 metres and reach about 30 — so you want the depth in order to explore the inside of them comfortably. I did the course with someone else, a woman who had done her divemaster a little before me and stayed on a bit longer. It was taught by Yali, one of the club's instructors, and she was extremely professional. From the logbook: 6 dives · 5:05 under · 31 m, the deepest I have been · HTMS Sattakut 742 ×3, HTMS Suphairin 313, Shark Bay, Southwest Pinnacle

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Everyone who finishes a divemaster, anywhere in the world, goes through a tradition called the Snorkel Test. While I was there four of us finished, all having started at different times. They stand you in front of all the staff, the whole crowd and all the friends who live there, and run party games with drinking and tasks. You also have to come up with a group idea for a costume. We went as three dive sites — Red Rock, Green Rock and White Rock — and one of us went as the Italian explorer who discovered them. It was a really fun evening, and a real bonding one. And slowly I am starting to feel the sadness of leaving this place.

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On the last day's diving I dived with Noa, who finished the divemaster with me. Because we are both divemasters, we are allowed to dive as a pair. Which means we can go and dive together with no instructor, at our own pace and for our own enjoyment, because we have the knowledge for it. And in principle we could already start working as divemasters if we felt like it. From the logbook: 2 dives · 1:50 under · to 28 m · Chumphon Pinnacle ×2. Both verified in my own name — that is what the certification changes.

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