Hello Michael and congratulations your near completion of Dive School. I have been with CalDive for about 5 years now in the capacity of Life Support Supervisor. I dove for Global for almost 5 years before I moved to CalDive. Diving is not the most steady working industry my friend. It is either feast or famine. Winter is not the best time to be getting in to the business but March might hold some promise. When you do graduate and seek employment, I would definitely recommend one of the larger dive companies such as Global Industries, CalDive, or Epic. They are large enough and have sufficient assets to carry through the "lean" times, such as now. We hope to see the industry picking up within the next year. Hopefully we will get a good hurricane blow through the Gulf in the coming season.

I would recommend that you have a good plan if you decide to come down and seek employment in the Gulf. Try to come with a room mate who can help share expenses and do not be too proud to take on some other form of work until things pick up.

Persistence pays off in this line of work so do not give up. If you really want to be a deep sea diver then you will have to have a lot of it. Only about 1 in 36 tenders ever break out.

Keep up your studies and keep your nose clean.

Tell Frank I said "howdy"

John