Two New Instructors.

Congratulations to Scubafish’ very own Angie and Pete for successfully completing their IDC and PADI Instructor Examination in Newcastle on the 2nd & 3rd September.

Gary Mawston of Aquanorth Newcastle ran the IDC over a 7day period, Gary (The one with the shades) and his team put both Angie and Pete, along with the other Instructor and IDC Staff Instructor candidates through their paces, to ensure that they all came up to scratch. Which proved to be a real eye opener to our new instructors…

The PADI Instructor Development Course does just that, develops instructors. The course focuses on the 4 areas of being an instructor, these are Dive Theory, Knowledge Development, Confined Water training and Open Water training.

Dive Theory, tests and builds on your knowledge of diving theory by testing the areas of Physics, Physiology, Decompression Theory & the RDP, General Skill & Environment, Equipment and System Standards & procedures. As Part of the IE each Instructor Candidate is expected to achieve 75% pass rate (80% for system Standards & procedures).

Knowledge Development, builds on the candidates ability to teach the PADI system to student divers.

Confined Water Training, builds on the candidate’s ability to teach in-water skills and evaluate a student divers mastery of these skills.

Open Water Training, builds on the candidate’s ability to evaluate student divers in an open water situation.

All Theory and Knowledge development presentations were held at Aquanorths facility in the Heaton area of Newcastle, with pool session taking place at various locations around the city.

Open water was a different matter with the Sea only about 15 minutes away IDC and IE took full advantage of this.

To be honest the diving around the Newcastle area is excellent (when the weather conditions allow), even on training dives the vis was never below 3m and was often upward of 7m – 8m with crabs and lobster in abundance and the odd pipe fish making an appearance.

However with the high level of workload the instructor candidates weren’t given much time for relaxing. The whole IDC ran into the 100 or so hours with early starts and late nights being the norm.

The IE was also a hard slog, with registration starting at 7:30am on the Saturday and a 7pm finish; with only about 30 mins break before work called again in the form of preparation for the mornings open water session.

Once again please join us in congratulating all those successful at the Newcastle IE

Congratulations are also in order for Ian from Scubafish who has increased his current rating to IDC Staff Instructor.