Best paying scuba diving job? And how much are they paid /hour guesstimated or /year?

Question

Ive always wanted to scuba dive professionally and my college advisor is always asking me what job would i want that you scuba dived in. Someone tell me!

Answer 1

Some of the neatest jobs are with NASA, this I would have to agree, never knew that they even paid.

For really great pay, Underwater construction pays great.  Another for high pay is underwater logging, here in the Portland area, logs that became water logged and sank 50 to 100 years ago are being brought up for lumber.  Both of these pay high rates, but are also dangerous.

There are also some jobs in engineering that require SCUBA diving.  I have come across some of these in job searches.

Answer 2

Neatest job? Definitely as a safety diver with NASA at their Astronaut training facility, pushing the trainees around their fake MMU's inside the pool's space shuttle mock up. Not bad pay either at 25 bucks an hour. A firm called Oceaneering had the contract for that and they always seemed to be hiring for it in the last few years in the industry pubs I get.

Best paying job per hour? Whatever the market will bear in the location you're in doing whatever in scuba with your certifications and training. If you're the only diver in town, your price is what you want to charge and the client is willing to pay. A good example is a golf ball diver. Yup. If you get the contract to clean out water hazards ( there is a course for this) there are some divers out there making almost 100 grand per year working normal hours. It's piecework (you get a cut of each ball) but some hazards can be gold mines.The flip side is...you may come face to face with some teeth if you're doing this in Florida or other Gator area. :)

On the recreational side, Dive Masters can make better cash than Instructors in the right environment. You'll be paid less per hour but your tips ( if you're people friendly) will beat anything an Instructor sees per week.

Edit: Tom B has a point. Salvaged or reclaimed timber is actually also a high paying scuba job in areas that relied on waterways to move logs. I'd forgotten that there actually are a few firms and individuals that are doing this. It's high paying if you are the company owner and have a market ( not hard to get customers these days in the building boom). The divers themselves earn what the market will bear. That's what it comes down to in just about any job. If you want to live and work in Massachusetts for example, after graduating from MIT,  with whatever degree, well, the job market is saturated to some extent. Top dog wins. Go further afield and that degree becomes more valuable.  Best bucks will always go to the best qualified ( both in certs and experience) in the market that will bear the brunt. A diver qualified to go tech ice, will always beat the Carib scuba. He'll also usually beat them if he went Carib.

I do have to disagree with Tom as to underwater construction and Scuba. Not so unless it's a quick and dirty job like for example the pool problems I deal with for a pal of mine that owns a pool biz or the odd trout pond thing.  Usually surface supplied or saturation divers rules here, not scuba. I own a inland marine dive biz and...the cost per man hour plus material costs make scuba a VERY unattractive option  for construction purposes unless it's a single dive within NDL, as a rule. That can change if you have no choice, such as not getting a dive barge in to the site ect. and you MAY have to go scuba, but it's a cost that most employers consider. I do.

My dive tenders earn $20 Canuck bucks/hr. They're not allowed to dive SS yet. They are, however allowed to Scuba most jobs within their skill sets. They are certified surface supplied divers. They spent 8 grand getting there. 1st year, they're tenders. After that...it's up to them as to how valuable they are to me. I pay what the market will bear. Get the drift? :) That's how the industry works even in recreational circles. Got a travel and tourism certificate and as a bonus speak more than one language? You'll make more than the unilingual DM that has no hospitality industry creds in an area has the demand for that. Why pay extra for someone over qualified for the job and vice versa.

Bottom line...you make what you can bring to the table and where that tables is and it's needs.