Digital materials
SSI Divemaster digital learning, professional resources and your digital logbook.
SSI Divemaster
Dive master
Your first professional rating. Live on Gili Air and learn the trade from the crew.
SSI Divemaster
Your first professional rating. Live on Gili Air and learn the trade from the crew.
Go professional
Divemaster is where diving stops being a holiday and becomes a craft. You build professional level skills, knowledge and judgement.
Divemaster is part study, part apprenticeship. You deepen your dive theory, sharpen your skills to demonstration standard, and spend real time assisting courses and guiding certified divers on our reefs.
excludes IDR 4,500,000 crew pack · All prices in IDR · Marine Park fee of IDR 100,000 not included.
What is the Divemaster program?
Divemaster is part study, part apprenticeship. You deepen your dive theory, sharpen your skills to demonstration standard, and spend real time assisting courses and guiding certified divers on our reefs.
You finish able to plan and lead dives, brief guests, manage a group in the water and support an instructor, the everyday work of a diving professional.
Knowledge, watermanship and real experience, developed together over four to eight weeks.
Dive theory in depth: physics, physiology, decompression theory, equipment and the SSI standards you will one day work to. This is the level where you stop following a briefing and start being able to give one.
Every skill you learned as a student, redone slowly and clearly enough for a nervous beginner to copy, plus watermanship assessments and rescue under load. You also work through navigation, site mapping, surface marker buoys and current checks, the things a guide is expected to read without being asked.
You assist real courses and guide certified divers on Gili Air reefs. You need 40 logged dives to begin and 60 to certify, so the internship is also where a lot of those dives happen: briefings, dive management, guest care and the ordinary daily work of a dive centre, learned from the crew doing it.
Talk to us about living on Gili Air and starting your Divemaster internship.
Everything you need is included, so you can focus on the diving.
SSI Divemaster digital learning, professional resources and your digital logbook.
One to one guidance from working instructors throughout.
Watermanship, demonstration skills and dive management practice.
Real time assisting courses and guiding on Gili Air reefs.
Program requirements
Divemaster is a professional rating, so the entry bar is higher. To start you need to:
Why Gili Air
Gili Air has no cars, daily boats and a tight local crew. It is a place to live and dive every day while you train, exactly the environment a Divemaster internship needs.
You will log dives across the full range of Gili sites, from shallow turtle reefs to the deeper wrecks, and get to know them the way a guide has to.
Four students per instructor at most, so you are never a number in a crowd.
Instructors who grew up diving these reefs and know every site by heart.
Study online at your own pace, then spend your water time actually diving, not sat in a classroom.
Clear prices and quality rental gear, with no hidden extras beyond the Marine Park fee.
The first professional rating in diving. A Divemaster can guide certified divers, assist instructors on courses and supervise diving activities.
At least 40 logged dives to begin the program and 60 to certify. We can help you build them here on Gili Air.
Typically four to eight weeks, depending on your starting experience and how much time you can dedicate.
The internship works best if you stay on the island, so you can join daily dives and real courses with the crew.
The Instructor path. Divemaster is the foundation every diving professional builds on.
A professional rating asks for more than the student questionnaire: you need a dive medical examined and signed by a physician, and you must be at least 18. Get it done before you fly out if you can, because it is the one prerequisite that is awkward to sort from a small island.
The program covers your mentoring and instructor time, the SSI Divemaster digital learning, your training dives, workshops and assessments, and your internship on live courses. The professional crew pack of SSI materials is quoted separately from the course price. Also paid separately: your dive medical, the Gili Matra Marine Park fee of IDR 100,000, a one-off paid in cash to the park, the optional IDR 50,000 Gili Eco Trust donation, insurance, accommodation and meals for the weeks you are here.
Not to start, we have well-maintained gear in all sizes and it is included. Most candidates end up buying their own mask, computer and eventually a regulator and BCD during the internship, simply because you are in the water every day and fit matters more once diving is your job.
Yes, professional level cover. There is no hyperbaric chamber on the Gili Islands, the nearest is in Mataram on Lombok with others in Bali, and you will be diving far more often than a holiday diver. Insurance that covers scuba, chamber treatment and evacuation, such as DAN, is the sensible baseline, and most ordinary travel policies exclude diving entirely.
At least 18 hours after your last dive, and a full 24 hours before a flight or a Mount Rinjani trek, since the trek climbs to altitude. After weeks of daily diving that margin is not optional, so book your flight with a spare day.