A diving instructor is a person who trains, and usually also assesses competence, of underwater divers. This includes freedivers, recreational divers including the subcategory technical divers, and professional divers which includes military, commercial, public safety and scientific divers.
Depending on the jurisdiction, there will generally be specific published codes of practice and guidelines for training, competence and registration of diving instructors, as they have a duty of care to their clients, and operate in an environment with intrinsic hazards which may be unfamiliar to the lay person.[1] Training and assessment will generally follow a diver training standard, and may use a diver training manual as source material.
Recreational diving instructors are usually registered members of one or more recreational diver certification agencies, and are generally registered to train and assess divers against specified certification standards. Originally these standards were at the discretion of each training and certification agency, but inter-agency and international standards now exist to ensure that the basic skills required for acceptable safety are included as a minimum standard for both instructors and recreational divers. Military diving instructors are generally members of the armed force for which they train personnel. Commercial diving instructors may be required to register with national government appointed organisations, and comply with specific training and assessment standards,[2] but there may be other requirements in some parts of the world.