Careers in Diving

  • Professional divers work for industry, the military and academia. The offshore oil and gas industry is probably the largest employer of divers but there are many other industries in which divers work.
  • Training requirements for professional divers vary significantly.
    • Offshore Oil & Gas divers generally undertake a training program lasting from several months to 2 years. The Association of Commercial Diving Educators (ACDE) is a trade organization which represents a number of schools oriented towards this sector in the United States. Other schools exist internationally including in the United Kingdom, France, Australia and South Africa among many other locations. Different countries around the world have different requirements and reciprocity agreements and potential students may wish to consider these issues.
    • All U.S. military divers with the exception of some special forces divers are trained at the Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center.
    • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration divers are trained at the NOAA Diving Center.
    • Many other organizations train professional divers, from police departments to universities. Even Aquarius Reef Base conducts extensive in-house training of our staff divers. An aspiring professional diver should consider where and in what capacity they wish to dive and decide on a training program accordingly.
  • Oil and Gas divers typically work offshore in places like the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, Brazil, Western Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia (among other locations). In the United States, Oil & Gas diving is concentrated in the Gulf of Mexico and largely based out of Louisiana. Aspiring divers from ACDE or similar training schools spend a number of years working as Tenders on Dive Support Vessels before ‘breaking out’ as surface divers. Career offshore divers may eventually move from surface supplied air diving to surface supplied mixed gas and eventually saturation diving to depths of 1000 feet sea water. The work involves activities like connecting subsea pipe and laying mud mats.
  • Commercial dives may also work on such tasks as bridge inspection and repair, water system inspection and repair or fish farming. Training requirements and career paths vary widely.
  • Military divers work at tasks such as ships husbandry and port maintenance as well as special operations missions including Explosive Ordinance Disposal and in tactical units such as the U.S. Navy SEAL teams. Divers may be trained to use rebreathers, surface-supplied mixed gas and saturation diving techniques. Indeed, Aquarius Reef Base, in its role as a national training asset, supports U.S. Navy saturation diver training.
  • Scientific divers are trained by their universities to conduct undersea research in such fields as marine biology and archaeology. Some scientific divers are professional scientists who dive and some are professional divers who undertake science.

Careers in Oceanography and Marine Biology

  • Links to information about careers in marine biology and oceanography.

  • Oceanographers apply basic sciences to studies of the sea, its contents and the surrounding environment. They are chemists, physicists, biologists and geologists who bring their special skills to ocean studies. They collaborate with one another and with engineers and social scientists on complex, challenging issues as they expand our knowledge of the ocean. They work in laboratories ashore, on ships, in submersibles and from underwater facilities like Aquarius.

  • Possible career areas include:
    • Biological oceanographers, marine biologists and fisheries scientists
    • Chemical oceanographers and marine geochemists
    • Geological oceanographers and geophysicists
    • Physical oceanographers
    • Marine and ocean engineers
    • Marine policy experts
  • Jobs are found in research and development, resource management, education and training, regulation enforcement, environmental monitoring and protection and advisory services. Approximately 50 percent of jobs are with federal or state governments, 40 percent are in education and the remainder are in private industries and nonprofit organizations.
  • If you’re thinking about a career in oceanography or marine biology, you should enroll in as many chemistry, earth science, biology, physics, computer science and mathematics classes as possible, both in high school and college. Educational requirements vary from a high school education to college undergraduate and graduate degrees.
  • As more and more of the United States population migrates to coastal areas, the importance of understanding and managing coastal waters increases. As a result, over the next 20 years there will be many opportunities for employment ranging from research to environmental protection activities.