I learnt to dive with PADI in 1996. My Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses were completed in the UK, with training dives completed during Oct - Nov in Stoney Cove quarry. I wore a two-piece 7mm wetsuit and suffered snow storms and water temperatures of 3-4 degrees celcius! No warm-water luxury for me, but I loved it nonetheless :-)
Following my initial training, I completed several more dives - often dive leading for my buddy, with no professional supervision - in the ice pool of Stoney Cove along with gaining diving experience in Spain and Cyprus (including several wreck dives on the awesome 'Zenobia'). Due to my work, I then moved location to the north of Scotland and gained more experience diving around the north-east coast of Aberdeenshire. This was followed by a magnificent diving holiday to the Maldives, where I got my first true taste of tropical diving and saw my first Whale Sharks and Manta Rays.
Over the following few years, I again moved south to live in central England and completed occasional weekend dives on the English South Coast, utilising both RIB and hard boats. Primarily these dives were limited visability, strong current, wreck dives in the 18-30m range. I also completed a military diving course that qualified me as a BSAC Sports Diver and this was soon followed by the PADI Nitrox and Rescue Diver courses.
In 2004, I enrolled on the PADI Divemaster course - again at Stoney Cove, England - and enjoyed an extended internship working their for nearly 18 months. This course was interspersed with two diving holidays to Thailand, where I completed nearly 60 dives around Koh Tao. After this, I enjoyed the benefits of military sports diving - taking part in an expedition to spend two weeks diving on the remote Ascension Island in the South Atlantic ocean. During this year, I also extended my BSAC qualifications and completed all of the requistite courses to qualify as an Open Water Instructor.
By 2006, I was diving on a weekly basis around the south coast of the UK and had enjoyed further training in a number of PADI speciality courses. I also enjoyed a second holiday to the Maldives, where I managed to do 33 dives in 12 days! Another highlight of this time was diving around the 'Blue Hole' and other reefs in Belize and completing my TDI Advanced Nitrox and Twinset Procedures courses with Mark Powell in the UK. The year ended with another holiday, where I dived daily in the Northern Red Sea (Eqypt and Israel), before venturing back to Thailand to complete my PADI IDC with Matt Boulton at Crystal Dive Resort in Koh Tao.
Following a brief return to the UK (and more south coast wreck diving), I returned to Koh Tao to work as an Instructor at several dive centres. Whilst I was working there, I completed my DSAT Tec Deep course with Jamie McCloud on the MV Trident. Having gained more experience on further technical diving expeditions over the course of the year, I then completed my Tec Deep Instructor course with Jamie. To date, my deepest wreck dive and penetration have been at 70m depth in the Gulf of Thailand - requiring nearly 2 hours of mixed gas decompression. During that year, I also completed an SSI Instructor cross-over course with SSI Thailand HQ.
I continued working as an instructor, and then dive shop manager, on Koh Tao for the remainder of 2007 and into 2008. Over this time, I developed a keen interest in advanced diving medicine and made a great effort to educate myself on the syllabus of the commercial Dive Medic course. During that time I also enjoyed a holiday to Vietnam, where I completed more dives with a macro-creature spotting focus. Also during this 2-3 year period, I worked hard to develop my underwater photography and digital editing capabilities - leading to me getting several photograps published in UK dive magazines.
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