Imagine swapping the daily routine for morning boat rides, tropical dive sites and a life built around the ocean.
Becoming a Divemaster gives you the opportunity to take something you already love and turn it into something bigger – a new skill, a way to travel, a career in diving, or the beginning of a completely different lifestyle.
Work on a paradise island. Travel the world through diving. Continue to Instructor. Spend a season somewhere incredible. Or simply take a few weeks out and see where life underwater takes you.
Welcome to Funky Turtle Dive Academy – professional dive training on Koh Tao designed to develop confident divers into capable dive professionals.
Our Go Pro Divemaster programs combine structured professional training, unlimited diving, specialty courses and optional accommodation into four or six weeks living and diving on Koh Tao.
New intakes start on the 1st & 16th of every month.
Trade Your Desk for a Dive Tank.
Choose Your Go Pro Experience
Whether you want a focused four-week route to Divemaster or six weeks fully immersed in professional diving, there’s a Funky Turtle Dive Academy program built around it.
GO PRO
4 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | Deep Specialty
43,000 THB
Four focused weeks taking you from recreational diver to SSI Divemaster.
You’ll work through structured professional training before progressing into guiding, instructor assists and gaining real experience around a working dive operation.
Your SSI Deep Diving Specialty is included, giving you additional training and experience in deeper recreational diving as you develop as a professional.
And throughout your program, your diving is unlimited.
Your scheduled training comes first, but whenever your schedule allows and there’s space on the boat, you can get back underwater.
GO PRO + STAY
4 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | Deep Specialty | Accommodation
47,000 THB
Everything in Go Pro, plus accommodation for your entire four weeks on Koh Tao.
For only 4,000 THB more, we’ll take care of where you’re staying while you focus on becoming a Divemaster.
No searching for accommodation. No monthly rental deposits. No moving halfway through your training.
Arrive on Koh Tao, drop your bags, meet your DMT group and start diving.
Our Best-Value 4-Week Package
GO PRO ALL IN
6 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | 4 Specialties | Advanced Specialty Diver + Master Diver
55,500 THB
If you’re serious about building a future in diving, this is the Funky Turtle Dive Academy program we recommend.
All In gives you six weeks to develop your professional skills, gain more real-world experience and build a broader foundation as a diver.
Alongside your Divemaster training, you’ll complete four SSI Specialty programs:
Deep Diving · Enriched Air Nitrox · Navigation · Perfect Buoyancy
You’ll also achieve SSI Advanced Specialty Diver and SSI Master Diver recognition, giving you a much broader recreational training background alongside your professional qualification.
The extra two weeks aren’t about taking longer to become a Divemaster.
They’re about giving you more time to become a better one.
Recommended for Future Dive Professionals
GO PRO ALL IN + STAY
6 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | 4 Specialties | Accommodation
61,500 THB
The complete Funky Turtle Dive Academy experience.
Six weeks living on Koh Tao, with your professional training, specialty development, unlimited diving and accommodation all taken care of.
You’ll complete your SSI Divemaster, plus Deep Diving, Enriched Air Nitrox, Navigation and Perfect Buoyancy, while building the experience required for your Advanced Specialty Diver and Master Diver recognition.
And you’ll have accommodation for your entire six-week stay.
The difference between All In and All In + Stay is just 6,000 THB
Come to Koh Tao.
Live diving for six weeks.
Leave a dive professional.
The Complete Go Pro Experience
Compare Your Options
| GO PRO | GO PRO + STAY | ALL IN | ALL IN + STAY | |
| Duration | 4 Weeks | 4 Weeks | 6 Weeks | 6 Weeks |
| SSI Divemaster | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited Diving | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deep Specialty | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enriched Air Nitrox | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Navigation | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Perfect Buoyancy | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Specialty Diver* | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Master Diver* | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Accommodation | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Equipment Discounts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Additional Specialty Discounts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price | 43,000 | 47,000 | 55,500 | 61,500 |
*Recognition ratings are awarded once the applicable SSI training and logged dive requirements have been completed.
More Than a Divemaster Course
The Funky Turtle Dive Academy is built around a simple idea:
Getting the certification is important.
Being ready to use it is more important.
As a recreational diver, you’re mostly responsible for your own dive. As you move into professional diving, that changes.
You’ll start learning to think about the entire group.
Where are we diving? What are the conditions doing? What’s the best route? Who are the divers? What’s their experience? What’s the plan if conditions change?
You’ll develop the skills to plan and lead dives, deliver professional briefings, navigate confidently, manage groups, assist instructors and recognise problems before they develop.
But you’ll also learn how the diving industry works behind the scenes.
How boats operate. How groups are organised. How sites are chosen. How courses run. How professionals communicate with customers. And how a dive centre turns a boat full of different divers into a safe, enjoyable day underwater.
That’s the difference between completing a course and training to become a professional.
A Structured Route to Going Pro
Our Divemaster programs aren’t open-ended internships where you spend months hanging around a dive centre wondering when you’re going to finish.
Every Funky Turtle Dive Academy Go Pro intake begins on either the 1st or 16th of the month.
That means you start alongside other candidates and progress through a structured training pathway together.
The program is divided into two distinct phases.
Weeks 1-2: Learn It
Your first two weeks are training focused.
You’ll work closely with your instructors developing the knowledge, skills and judgement you’ll need before taking greater responsibility.
You’ll develop your professional dive theory and work on dive planning, briefings, navigation, rescue skills, emergency management, professional-quality scuba skills and the practical side of working as a dive leader.
You’ll also start understanding how the dive centre operates beyond what customers normally see.
The aim is simple:
Give you the foundations before asking you to use them.
Weeks 3-4: Do It
Now the focus starts shifting towards experience.
Instead of listening to briefings, you’ll start delivering them.
Instead of following a guide, you’ll start planning the route.
You’ll guide dives under supervision, assist instructors with real students and develop your knowledge of Koh Tao’s dive sites.
You’ll work on your mapping project, navigation and professional responsibilities while becoming more involved with the day-to-day operation of the dive centre.
The training is still there.
But increasingly, you’re learning by doing.
By the end of four weeks, the goal isn’t simply for you to have passed your Divemaster assessments.
We want you to feel ready to be the Divemaster.
Why We Recommend Going All In
If your goal is to earn your Divemaster certification, our four-week Go Pro program is designed to get you there.
If your goal is to work as a dive professional, we’d recommend All In.
The extra two weeks give you something that can’t be rushed:
Experience.
More guiding. More instructor assists. More dive sites. More navigation. More time underwater. More opportunities to deal with real situations.
And more time to make mistakes while you’re still surrounded by experienced professionals who can help you learn from them.
You’ll also complete four specialties that directly complement your development.
Deep Diving builds your knowledge and experience in deeper environments.
Enriched Air Nitrox develops your understanding of one of the most widely used breathing gases in recreational diving.
Navigation becomes considerably more important when you’re the person everyone else is following.
And Perfect Buoyancy gives you the opportunity to refine your trim, weighting and control to the standard you’d expect from a dive professional.
Together, those four specialties and your required experience also build towards SSI Advanced Specialty Diver and Master Diver recognition.
For someone considering continuing to Instructor, working on Koh Tao or travelling the world through diving, All In is the Dive Academy pathway we’d recommend.
Unlimited Diving
If you’re going to become a dive professional, you should spend as much time underwater as possible.
That’s why unlimited diving is included throughout every Funky Turtle Dive Academy Go Pro program.
There isn’t a package of dives that gets counted down every time you get on the boat.
Your professional training always comes first. You’ll have workshops, assignments, training dives, guiding, instructor assists and other course commitments.
But whenever your schedule allows and we have space on a scheduled trip?
Go diving.
Every additional dive gives you another opportunity to improve your buoyancy, practise your navigation, learn a new site, experience different conditions or simply become more comfortable underwater.
We want our DMTs diving.
A lot.
Unlimited diving applies for the duration of your enrolled program and is subject to your scheduled training commitments, completion of required assignments, operational requirements and available spaces on scheduled dive trips.
Train Here. Stay Here.
If you’re travelling to Koh Tao specifically to complete your Divemaster, our + Stay packages are the easiest way to do it.
Go Pro + Stay adds four weeks accommodation for just 4,000 THB.
All In + Stay adds six weeks accommodation for just 6,000 THB.
But the Stay packages are about more than getting an incredibly low accommodation rate.
You’ll be living alongside travellers, divers and other people experiencing Koh Tao while you train.
Your DMT group will spend weeks diving together, training together, practising briefings, sharing boats and probably spending plenty of time together once the diving is finished.
You don’t just come to the Dive Academy each morning and disappear afterwards.
You get to live the experience.
For anyone travelling to Koh Tao specifically to Go Pro, we’d strongly recommend adding Stay.
Funky Turtle Dive Academy Benefits
Your training with the Dive Academy gives you more than what’s included in the course itself.
As a Funky Turtle DMT, you’ll receive exclusive discounts on dive equipment throughout your program, helping you build the equipment setup you’ll eventually want as a working professional.
You’ll also receive discounted rates on additional eligible SSI Specialty programs.
Maybe you want to add Wreck.
Maybe Night Diving.
Maybe six weeks around people who spend their lives diving makes you realise there’s a lot more you want to learn.
That’s exactly what the Dive Academy is for.
Your Divemaster is the beginning of your professional development, not the end of it.
Can I Start My Divemaster?
To begin the SSI Divemaster pathway, you’ll need to be at least 18 years old and have a minimum of 40 logged open-water dives totalling at least 25 hours.
You’ll also need Diver Stress & Rescue or an equivalent certification, together with the applicable Deep, Navigation and Night & Limited Visibility training or qualifying experience.
By the time you complete your Divemaster, you’ll need at least 60 logged open-water dives totalling 40 hours, alongside successful completion of your training and assessments.
But you don’t necessarily need to meet every requirement today to start planning your Go Pro experience.
Don’t Have 40 Dives Yet?
That’s easy to solve.
If you’re joining one of our Go Pro programs but haven’t yet reached the required 40 dives, we’ll give you access to a discounted make-up dive rate before your program begins.
Come to Koh Tao earlier.
Go diving.
Build your experience.
Then start the Dive Academy with the dives you need.
And if you’re missing Stress & Rescue or another prerequisite, speak to us.
Send us your current certifications and dive history and we’ll help you build the training pathway you need before your intake begins.
Life at the Funky Turtle Dive Academy
Your Divemaster is professional training.
But you’re also doing it on Koh Tao.
That means morning boat rides, tropical dive sites, afternoons underwater and sunsets with the people you’ve spent the day diving with.
You’ll train alongside other DMTs, work with instructors from different backgrounds and spend weeks surrounded by people who have already made diving part of their lives.
Days off mean exploring the island, finding beaches, heading to viewpoints, snorkelling, meeting people – or jumping back on the boat because apparently unlimited diving wasn’t enough.
It’s serious training.
It just happens to take place on a paradise island.
Whats Next?
Your Divemaster is just the beginning of what’s possible.
From here, you can join our team and start working with us at Funky Turtle Divers, gaining real experience guiding certified divers and becoming part of daily life on Koh Tao as a professional diver.
Many divemasters choose to stay on and continue their journey by completing their Instructor Training Course with us. This is where you take the next step, learn how to teach others to dive, and start building a career as a scuba instructor.
Whether you stay to work with us, continue into instructor training, or use your experience as a launchpad for travel and diving around the world, this is where your professional path really begins.
What comes next is up to you – but you won’t be doing it alone.
The Funky Turtle Dive Academy Pathway
GO PRO
4 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | Deep Specialty
43,000 THB
A focused route from recreational diver to SSI Divemaster.
GO PRO + STAY
4 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | Deep Specialty | Accommodation
47,000 THB
Our best-value four-week option for anyone travelling to Koh Tao.
GO PRO ALL IN
6 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | 4 Specialties
55,500 THB
Recommended for Future Dive Professionals
Divemaster plus Deep, Nitrox, Navigation and Perfect Buoyancy, with the pathway to Advanced Specialty Diver and Master Diver recognition.
More training. More diving. More experience.
GO PRO ALL IN + STAY
6 Weeks | Unlimited Diving | 4 Specialties | Accommodation
61,500 THB
The Complete Dive Academy Experience
Six weeks living and diving on Koh Tao with your training and accommodation taken care of.
Ready to Go Pro?
Maybe you’re looking for a career in diving.
Maybe Instructor is already the goal.
Maybe you want to travel and work around the world.
Or maybe you’re ready to spend a few weeks on a tropical island finding out where diving could take you.
The Funky Turtle Dive Academy gives you the training, experience and time underwater to find out.
New Divemaster Intakes
1st & 16th of Every Month
Choose four weeks or six.
Choose whether you want to Stay.
Then come to Koh Tao and start your professional diving journey.
Trade Your Desk for a Dive Tank.
Funky Turtle Dive Academy
Dive Smart. Stay Funky.
