I would not really be what you would call a real a commercial diver but I guess I have dived commercially but never attended any commercial dive schools and basically learned on the job or taught myself through extensive reading. I began diving recreationally in 1967 at 12 years old using the double hose regs you see on Sea Hunt. Back then I was living on a Navy base in the Philippines. No one was certified in those days. My instruction was basic. A navy diver taught me how to use dive tables, told me to never hold my breath and never ascend faster than my smallest bubbles. That was basically it. I dove for 20 more year with no formal instruction. 20 years later I got my first scuba certification as an open water diver by trading a small bail out scuba cylinder for it to an instructor I knew.
My interest in diving led me to the point where I was on a couple of dive teams where I was paid doing public safety diving and underwater criminal investigations working on a state dive team and later supervised a state regional unit. I have dozens of certifications from various agencies like PADI, SSI, TDI, Dive Rescue International, and others and got an instructor rating as well as the recreational certs such as Dive Master and Master Diver, for what they are worth. For commercial diving those certs are not worth much.
I started doing technical and advanced diving using mixed gases and began diving commercially and used the typical gear commercial such as Kirby Morgan bandmasks with surface supplied air and dive hats like the KMB Superlights. I currently dive the Navy Mark 12 helmet just because I got a good deal on it. I really am not crazy about that one.
My commercial diving was mostly all inland diving and was limited to very light duty work like salvage, cutting off pilings with hydraulic chainsaws, replacing zinc anodes, lifting and recovering vehicles, repairing overflows inlets, valve work and using Broco torches to cut through about anything.
Much of the work I did was part-time as a side job. It paid ok for what it was and I mostly worked to assist others who did it full time. I did a lot of research into looking at going full time doing off-shore diving and it was not for me. Being a commercial diver is basically a construction job done underwater. I was not crazy about construction work as it is just hard work. In the water it is tougher. I worked as a shipfitter at the ship yards in Norfolk VA after I flunked out of college. It was that tough work that motivated me go back to college after a year and get a degree so I would not have to bust my ass to make a living. (I got 4 A's and 1 B my first semester back just because I did not want to go back to the ship yard for a living)
One of the things that left an early impression on me was was seeing a contract diver who worked for Crofton Diving die at the Norshipco ship yard while clearing a railway and he got entangled and drowned.
I thought about going full time commercial and getting in a school and certifying for saturation diving and working oil fields or being am dive medic as I was an EMT instructor. The more I looked at it the less attractive it was.
Most of the newly graduated divers from the schools cannot find work. Those that get picked up only get work as a tender and it takes a long time before they can pay their dues and finally get in the water. A lot of the work that was available in the oilfields were in the North Sea or in the Middle East. Screw that...
Saturation diving will give you bone necrosis and none of it looked that much fun to me. So my decision was just to enjoy diving recreationally, dive for artifacts, shoot some tautog or cobia and pick up some small jobs that pay enough to support my diving hobby. The other day I went to a lake to repair a break in a rubber airline that went to an air diffuser. A beaver had bitten through the 3 inch airline mistaking the hose for a branch. A double barbed splice and two hose clamps were installed in a few minutes and I was hundreds of dollars richer.
I am not trying to compare what I did with inshore to jobs off shore, it is apples and oranges. Off shore a diver will use a jet hose to tunnel through the mud to go underneath something he wants to snake a cable under. It is a fire hose on steroids. The diver will actually burrow underneath a barge to get a line under it. The work I did was more likely to involve using a power washer to do the same thing but on a much smaller scale.
A lot of days I would pick up 500 bucks a day for a job that might last a week, but then it could be a while before I got another job. But I have had a lifelong interest in diving and have been diving for almost 50 years. I have done a fair about of research into diving commercially and just decided it would not fit my lifestyle. It is just harder than the advertisements make it out to be.
I spent a lot of time lurking on commercial dive forums like
www.offshorediver.com . You can learn a lot from those guys as they are actually working, or trying to find work and it was a real eye opener to me. What bothered me is that the job seems like it is feast or famine for a lot of the guys. I would be cool with that if I was not married with kids.
I have bought some gear from the guys on that forum that were getting out of diving as they just weren't making it. The analogy would be going into a pawn shop and seeing all the guitars for sale that came from aspiring rock stars that never made it. Not everybody is successful. But if you can break into the business and get the work it could mean the difference between wearing a Seiko dive watch or a Rolex. I would ask this same question on that forum and you will get an earful with the understanding that none of those guys really want any other competition.
