Divemaster is PADI's first professional rating. Complete it and you become a member of PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, qualified to work in diving: guiding certified divers, assisting instructors and taking people on their very first dives.
We take that seriously. At MCP you train inside a working marine conservation organisation, to a standard far above the minimum, alongside survey teams rather than dive tourists. It's an ideal place to train if you're heading for NGO or scientific diving work, as a diving safety officer or expedition leader, or simply want to become a genuinely excellent diver.
The MCP difference
We're not a dive shop but a working environmental organisation, so all our diving is shaped by our conservation work. Even our PADI Open Water course includes far more buoyancy work than usual, because our volunteers need the skills to survey reefs. Most entry-level training, PADI or otherwise, aims to make new divers safe and reasonably proficient. The scientific nature of our work means we have to aim quite a bit higher.
The same goes for divemaster training. The dives and logistics you'll manage involve fellow conservationists and scientific divers in training, not dive tourists. Our operation runs more flexibly than a typical dive centre. We don't work to the tight schedules of recreational diving, which the dive customer usually never sees, because doing things right matters more to our science than doing them fast. You'll meet every PADI standard, but most of your training, dives and work will be at a more advanced stage than at a typical dive centre.
What you won't do is deal with walk-in customers or take tourists on guided dives. We say this up front, because you'd be disappointed if you expected your divemaster training to look like a typical dive centre's. It's also worth knowing if you plan to work in a recreational dive shop afterwards: you'll probably find you're used to higher standards, and to more skilled divers, than you'll meet there.
We dive exclusively in technical backplate and wing setups. You'll master helicopter turns, back kicks and a range of finning techniques, and learn to complete complex tasks with perfect buoyancy and trim. Your underwater problem-solving skills will be second to none. Our scuba gear
When you're not in dedicated training, you're part of our teams, on anything from teaching to planting mangroves, removing ghost nets, responding to crown-of-thorns infestations, using lift bags to move sinkers for permanent moorings and helping mark out marine protected areas. You'll learn a great deal of ecology and marine biology, far outside the normal scope of divemaster training. Partners' requests often come at short notice, so no two stays look quite the same.
Stay longer and you can learn advanced dive planning, scuba equipment servicing, stage tank diving and self-reliant diving. Candidates who stay 16, 20 or 24 weeks take the PADI Tec 40, Tec 45 or Tec 50 course for free. You can also learn gas blending. Technical diving
We're happy to teach you far beyond the minimum required to pass, and we're confident our dive skill standards are higher than those of any recreational dive shop. That's why our courses take as long as they do.
The course
PADI's professional members are divemasters, assistant instructors, instructors and those holding higher ratings, so becoming a divemaster is genuinely vocational training: the first step of a career in diving.
During the course you'll map a dive site, practise your rescue skills and lead divers in controlled conditions with your instructor. You'll assist on PADI courses and run skill refreshers for divers who've been out of the water for a while.
You'll also learn to demonstrate scuba skills, such as mask clearing and sharing air, slowly and clearly enough that others can learn from your example.
The aim is a standard high enough that you're ready for an instructor development course, should you choose to take one.
Course length
With us, eight weeks at the very least, or 12 if you're not a certified scuba diver yet.
Because the divemaster course works as a checklist, where you tick off each task once you've done it well enough, it's possible to finish in as little as two to three weeks. That can meet PADI standards on paper. You can improve tremendously as a diver in two weeks and learn to perform skills to demonstration standard, but you won't develop any real mastery of diving.
To become a proficient divemaster, you need experience in a wide range of conditions: deep dives, night dives, drift diving, boat and beach entries, different equipment setups, handling equipment failures, understanding diver psychology and much more. In our opinion, anything shorter than a month or two, at the bare minimum, doesn't make sense. That's just being honest.
So we don't offer short courses. We aim to train you to a level we can be proud of, should you go on to work professionally as a divemaster. You're very welcome to stay longer, and we'd greatly appreciate your help with our conservation work. If you have three or four months, all the better.
Stay beyond eight weeks and you can move into scientific diving with our reef monitoring teams, then on to free technical diving courses at reduced weekly rates.
About six weeks of core training, then two weeks assisting our instructors.
Learn a survey method and join our survey teams. At least 10 weeks, ideally 12 or longer.
Weeks 13-16 at 440 USD a week.
Weeks 17-20 at 330 USD a week.
Weeks 21-24 at 220 USD a week, or skip tec and stay the last four weeks free.
Stay lengths assume you arrive with the prerequisites. New to diving? Allow up to four extra weeks at the start. Reduced rates apply from the 13th week of your stay.
Costs
Divemaster training costs the same as volunteering with us: 550 USD a week. That covers accommodation, three meals a day, all diving, gear rental, tuition, transport, marine park fees, airport pickup, tea and coffee. On top of that you pay only for manuals and materials, plus PADI's own application fee.
Stay longer than 12 weeks and the weekly rate drops in steps.
Slide to the number of weeks you'd like to stay, from 8 to 24, and tick any prerequisite courses you still need. Stays run in steps of two weeks.
8weeksYour divemaster course starts on arrival.
| 8 weeks × 550 USD | 4,400 USD |
|---|---|
| Divemaster crew pack (manual and materials) | 240 USD |
| PADI application fee, paid to PADI (approx.) | 200 USD |
| Total | 4,840 USD |
| Average per week | 605 USD |
Dive numbers are solid estimates. We generally dive six days a week. Night or afternoon dives push the count up, while a community day may mean only one dive or none at all. Around 12-13 dives a week is realistic.
PADI charges its application fee in Australian dollars, so the USD figure moves with the exchange rate. Many candidates also add the Enriched Air Nitrox (85 USD) or Self-Reliant Diver (65 USD) course. All our prices are on the course prices page.
Often the biggest expense of long professional dive training abroad isn't the training itself but the cost of living: meals and accommodation add up over several months. Our remote location means both are included, along with costs often left out of prices elsewhere, such as gear rental and marine park fees. Compared like for like, divemaster training with us usually costs about the same as, or less than, a programme of similar length elsewhere. The experience, though, is very different, and only you can decide whether that suits you.
See it for yourself
Absolutely. But not with MCP, and there are two reasons why.
First, we want to be proud of our candidates. A divemaster certification is a professional licence to dive with responsibility for other people's safety, and that's not something to take lightly. Many recreational dive shops teach the course in as little as fourteen days. We have completely different ambitions.
Second, a longer stay gives you time to experience conservation work. That benefits you, and it justifies the extra effort our instructors put into your training. It also leaves a buffer in case an ear infection or another minor issue keeps you out of the water for a week.
Some people take the course simply to dive a lot and improve, with no plan to work professionally. We respect that as much as any other ambition, and we'll train you to the same level.
In an eight-week programme you complete the core divemaster training in about six weeks, then spend roughly two weeks helping our instructors teach PADI courses and working on any weak spots in your skills. That time is mainly about teaching scuba, not science: two weeks isn't enough to prepare you to contribute meaningfully as a scientific diver.
Stay at least 10 weeks, ideally 12 or longer, and you move into scientific diving once your divemaster course is done. You learn one of our survey methodologies, and on a ten-week stay you start scientific diving around week seven and spend your last two weeks contributing to real conservation work underwater. The exception is if you'd rather focus purely on scuba training, for example because you're heading for an instructor course.
Because of the scientific nature of our work, we neither want nor expect our divemaster candidates to engage in marketing or recruiting divers. As a divemaster candidate, you will not be walking along beaches handing out brochures or sitting outside trying to persuade passersby to try diving. The typical ways divemaster candidates repay free internships simply do not apply to us. We are not a recreational dive shop and are in no competition with such establishments. Doing divemaster training with us is very, very different.
Our organisation mostly attracts volunteers who are already divers, many of whom are highly capable and experienced. The kind of diving we do is almost exclusively work- or mission-oriented. “Guides” are simply not needed, nor do our divers require assistance with gear or other routine tasks. Volunteers are fully expected to wash their own scuba gear, carry their tanks, and plan their dives. All the work that you might do to repay training in a dive shop offering a “free internship” is either unnecessary or already being handled as part of someone else’s duties. So, to be clear: no, we do not offer free internships.
Please be aware that the reason some dive shops offer free internships is not altruism. Trainees repay the dive shop with their hard work. This can be a fair arrangement if you are gaining experience by guiding divers, conducting boat briefings, or other activities that prepare you to work in the recreational scuba industry as a divemaster. In such cases, your efforts become part of the learning process. However, regrettably, this is often thinly disguised exploitation if the tasks you perform as repayment involve sweeping floors, recruiting divers, cleaning bungalows, bartending at a resort, or other mundane activities that do not contribute to your growth as a professional diver. Unfortunately, many so-called “free internships” are simply cheap labour in disguise.
Yes. MCP offers instructor internships, which vary a lot in structure and length. A common route is to go from your divemaster training into an instructor development course (IDC), then intern with us as an instructor. We don't run IDCs ourselves, but Bongo Bongo dive centre nearby does: see their page on doing your IDC in the Philippines. Others arrive as certified divemasters and only need the instructor course.
As a working environmental organisation, we want every instructor intern to excel and to learn in the unique setting we offer, so we take only one or two at a time. If we're full, we're very happy to help you find a placement at a nearby dive centre.
Tell us a little about yourself and your plans, and we'll get back to you with everything you need to know.