Marine conservation during your Dive Instructor course #IDCWITHKIM
Once you become a dive professional you are a true ocean ambassador. At least that is what I hope! ;-)
You can not only participate and organize conservation programs like Dive Against debris etc., but there is more. You can now teach! Teach different conservation orientated programs of Project AWARE! How cool is that?
As a PADI Course Director, I see many beginner dive instructors stepping into the world of teaching and they all love it! But for some reason, 9 out of 10 new dive instructors hesitate about teaching or even talking about Project AWARE.
The question is now of course "How is that possible?!"
And guess what, after asking around at different dive professionals, the most common answers are:
- the lack of knowledge
- the assuming difficulty of the topics
The good news is you do not have to have a master degree or any degree in marine conservation to be able to teach these programs. I assume, that if you want to become a dive instructor, you automatically love your office, which is the ocean! Hence, no fancy pansy degree is needed, just you and your common interest combined with your passion for diving! If you doubt where you can find the knowledge about the coral reef and its ecosystems, the website of Project AWARE gives you so many tools and insights, you just have to find the time for it to collect and organize it for yourself. If you are still not sure then you can always contact me or the Project AWARE team because they happen to be awesome and very helpful.
Even more great news is, during my IDC program which is also known as #idcwithkim, I automatically schedule one full day of Project AWARE and a Marine Conservation workshop that will give you the basic tools and knowledge how to teach conservation-related courses. The best cherry on this particular cake is that we also go fun diving as part of the IDC conservation program to point out those important coral reef issues in real-life to you!
So yes! Please stay cool as a dive pro ocean ambassador and teach the Project AWARE Specialties! If you are a dive pro and like to brush-up your AWARE conservation knowledge with me, just let me know!
Happy bubbles!
Kim van Winkel
Owner Scuba Center Asia Lembongan
WA: +6282247484788
