After graduating from dive school, you will have the choice to work inland (rivers, lakes, etc.), or offshore. If you choose to work offshore, you will enter the industry as a tender. As a tender, you will basically take care of equipment, and assist the diver. You will not be a diver, you will be a deck whore. Yes, occasionally you will get to dive, but your job is to stay on deck and learn about the whole operation so that when you are a diver, you will know how everything works. The average starting wage for a tender is about $8.50/hour, and you can expect to tend for 2-4 years. The average "breakout" diver wage, is about $11.50/hour, with depth pay added. But you are paid for 8 straight hours a day, and 4 overtime hours a day. You can work as little a zero hours a day (and still get paid for 12), or you can work as many as it takes to get the job done(48+hours in a row is the most I have worked.) There really is no standard, except when comparing the same types of jobs. The amount of work varies from company to company. I will probably make around $45000 this year. Not anywhere they tell you you will make, but it is good money in this state. The average wage in Louisiana is around $25,000.

I have worked at 4 different companies, and have only been here 4 years. I have worked with graduates from Young Memorial at every company. They are always the center of conversation, since they weren't raped of their finances. I have worked at Gulf Coast Marine Divers (Bought by American Oilfield Divers, now called Stolt Comex Seaway), McDermott Divers, Aquatica (formerly Acadiana Divers, now owned by Cal Dive), and Now at Cal-Dive. We work off our dive boats and do a lot of Saturation work. After graduating from dive school, if you want to work offshore in the gulf, you can choose from any of these companies.

There are two types of companies. Boat companies, and barge companies. The boat companies generally do all their work from boats and occasionally off drilling rigs. The others work almost exclusively from barges. Boats are wet, small, and much harder to work from. But you get the most experience from boat work. Barges are big, there is virtually no way to get sea sick, and the accomodations are better. You can usually stay dry, there is satellite tv, and all the toys are bigger. On barges, there is not as much diving, and it can get quite boring, unless you are doing tie in work or riser work. Although now we have satellite tv on all the boats, so it is much better than it used to be. Boat diving is a better way to dive if you ask me, even if the conditions are a little rougher.

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