Don't know if it matters. Maybe job placement might.

Good luck. And you would most likely have to wait tables and do dishes
in order to make a living.

DM's do a lot of the "grunt" work that instructors don't want to do. I
guess it is their way of "it rolls downhill" for them. When they were
DM's they too were "slaves". Now that they are free to "own" the
"slaves" they make them work.
As for being "bent".... not likely. Remember, it is the DM's that do the
grunt work while the instructor tries to hit on the female students.

The pay is terrible. The benefits aren't that great. Get a REAL job and
instruct/DM on the side. All those wonderful PADI pics of the "careers"
in professional diving are bogus. It's tough work, low pay and low benefits.

It depends on what you want out of it.  I did my IDC with a guy by the
name of Ralph Ericsson.  Of course, I didn't need anything else
besides the instruction.

I'm a security consultant.  I bill my clients $75 an hour and they
line up to pay for it.  That's enough to pay for my "hobby" as an
instructor.

Your instructor knows not where he speaks of.  I'd find another
instructor.

I've been teaching for 10 years, now.  At $25 a student through the
local shop, it takes a lot of classes to cover insurance and
membership, never mind trying to make a living.  As a DM on a boat,
you might make enough to not starve.

You'll find that you may have trouble getting a job in the Caribbean,
as most countrie want jobs to go to their people, first.

I'd forget about making it a career.

It also sounds like you are just starting out ("my instructor").  Take
some time to dive before you go off and do something "romantic" and
foolish.  Is it really worth $700 a year to teach?

We can always use another divemaster.

I knew this guy Jeff in Boynton Beach, working in a dive
shop at a marina.

He said "I should never have turned a fun hobby into a job".
Got sick of it doing it day in and day out, and scrabbling to
make enough not to starve in a cutthroat industry.

ECUDiver   May 9, 4:52 pm     show options

Newsgroups: rec.scuba
From: "ECUDiver" <kablu...@yahoo.com> - Find messages by this author
Date: 9 May 2005 13:52:58 -0700
Local: Mon,May 9 2005 4:52 pm
Subject: Advice about going pro in the Scuba Industry
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I really love diving and want to turn it into a career. I am still
doing research before I make the plunge. What is the best PADI school
for your IDC? Is Utilla better than Prodive in Ft. Lauderdale?

What kind of jobs do you get when you go all the way through to
instructor? My ideal job would be working in a resort in the Caribbean
preferrably on a dive boat. I could even wait tables on the side if I
had to until I got the right job.

My instructor said that divemasters stay "bent" all the time. Is that
really true and wouldn't that be really damaging to their body?

Any advice or experience you have in this area would be appreciated.
Thanks.

I see that several ppl here gave you 'advise.'   I'm glad that they did
cause you need to balance it all out,  take the crap answers with the
decent answers.  I think that you got alot of crap answers so far.  I
suggest that you take a minute and look on www.bajaex.com  You'll see a
wide variety of DM's on there,  but most have degrees and that is
something you should persue.  There's a lady who used to post here on
this group on a regular basis until she got a job as a DM in the
carribean....  and some of us are still lucky enough to get pics back
from her.  I think that if you asked,  she wouldn't mind telling you at
all how she is living her dream with a DM job and how it's working for
her.  She's very happy and she would tell the  "na-sayers"  here to
sh.t in their hat and wear it.  <grin>