My name is Luke George, I am 27 years old and a PADI master scuba diver trainer.

They say that all life began in the ocean, maybe it did who knows, it seems quite logical, but One thing we know for sure is that we all begin our lives surrounded by a pressurised liquid in the womb.

For some of us I guess we never let that feeling go. This was definitely very clear in my case.

At only ten days old my mother had me in the swimming pool in her arms whilst watching my older brother trying to overcome his fear of the water by jumping off the edge into the shallow end. The pool attendant told my mother to put me into the water and let me go. As you can imagine she was quite reluctant to let go of her new born baby into 1m or three feet of water but very cautiously she did and off I doggy paddled.

My interest in scuba diving first started as a young boy about the age of seven, when I saw a team of search and recovery divers surfacing after placing lift bags on my father’s sunken fishing trawler.

I thought they were frog men just like on action man.

My family has a distinguished military and sea faring history all the way back to the seventeenth century where it all began with captain Henry Morgan the pirate, so I guess you can say “its in the blood.”

All through school and teenage I asked about how I could get into being a diver and most of the people I went to tried to put me off with “oh its very dangerous and it will shorten your life” when I asked why they said “because of the impact that the pressure has on your body.” These answers were obviously based on lack of proper information. This somewhat quashed my appetite for diving and due to the lack of recreational diving facilities in my area of Wales, I began to lose interest.

It was some years later when I was about 18, I went on a trip to Weymouth to meet my girlfriend’s stepfather and family. Her step father was a fire-fighter and a recreational diver in the local port area. Over the weekend that I was staying there I brought up in conversation that I too was interested in diving but had never got the chance to try it. The next day when I got up, he had already got out his diving equipment, tank and harness, mask, open heel fins and giant weight belt as he was going to be using a dry suit. He then told me that today we were going diving. I was so excited about this that it didn’t even occur to me to think about what type of suit I would be wearing, or what time of year it was. It was December by the way and anyone from the u.k will know all about how cold December can be.

So there we were on the boat on our way to the dive site with only one more stop to make, to pick up the tanks that we would need for the dive. We stopped at the local dive shop which must have belonged to a friend of Chris’s, and in return for the tanks they wanted a couple of lobsters! (I am Not sure if that’s legal or not!)

In total there was four of us, myself, Rhiannon (my girlfriend at the time), her mother Anna and Chris her step father. All three of us were planning to try diving for the first time under the instruction of Chris, who I now know is not by any means a scuba instructor. We arrived at the dive site just off the tip of Portland, were Chris started to put on his equipment and informed us that Anna would be going first with him, then me, then Rhiannon, all three of us using the same tank.

When it got to be my turn he handed me a 3mm short wet suit that was to big, a tank and harness (no b.c.d) and a 20lb or 10 kg weight belt and of course the fins and mask. His pre dive briefing involved telling me that “if I see you holding your breath I will punch you in the stomach to make you breath, so don’t hold your breath.”

Once I was in the water I had no problem in getting down due to the excessive amount of weight around my waste and luckily I had no equalising trouble either, as I can equalise just by moving the inner part of my ear. I bounced along the bottom in about 25 ft or 7m of water, occasionally seeing  through the terrible visibility small crabs and the odd unknown fish. After about 15-20 mins I was so cold I was blue from the lips down so we ended the dive and went to the surface. Once we were all back on the boat and warm again we were all talking about what a good experience it was regardless of the cold, poor fitting equipment, over weighting, poor instruction and terrible Vis. This horrifying account of a first dive didn’t put me off, but maybe this will outline a few factors that you may want to consider when going for a first diving experience.

When it came to my next scuba experience it was almost three years later when I was traveling through South East Asia with my older brother Justin who was already a certified padi open water diver. We were staying on an island called kho Tao in the gulf of Thailand. We had already been on the island for some considerable time just enjoying the laid back Thai way of life, lounging around on beaches and taking in the local culture and food.

Kho Tao is the smallest of the three islands in the gulf and predominantly known to be a dive island with over 30 dive resorts at the time. One afternoon we were lying on the beach when a boat pulled up full of divers, my brother asked me if I would be interested in going for a dive and of course I was.

This was to be a dramatically different experience to the last one, 28 degrees Celsius in the ocean as compared to 7 degrees in Portland, proper equipment that fitted and professional instruction through the padi system. I knew that I was going to enjoy it so I signed up for the open water course and started on the academics straight away.

I read the entire open water manual that day and completed all knowledge reviews ready for the lessons that would follow the next day.

 When I arrived at the dive shop I met my instructor, who was an Israeli man taking a break from doing his national service with the Israeli army. His style of teaching was excellent, very military, but I was used to that after spending 5 years as an army cadet.

The boat we were to be diving from was a thirty meter live aboard anchored just of the island. Following the classroom sessions we took a small long tail tender out to the boat to start the practical part of the course, ie, equipment setup and confined water training. After we had finished setting up our equipment he started to give me the pre dive briefing. His briefing very thorough and he made me feel very comfortable about what we were about to do. Anything compared to my last experience was going to be a breeze.

We took a giant stride of the back step of the boat into water which was about 5 meters or 15 feet deep and very clear. We were at the site known as Kho Nan Guan or The Japanese Gardens, known as such for the extensive and very beautiful coral reef waiting below.

We swam on our backs, on the surface into the beach area where we would start our confined water session. This was an exceptional place, the only place in the world where three separate islands are linked by one sand bar. A Very different site to Portland sound!

Once under water, he began to demonstrate the essential skills needed to be able to dive in open water, which I found very easy, so we moved through the first three sessions very quickly. We then swam under water through the Japanese Gardens gradually getting down to our maximum depth of twelve meters or forty feet. It was an incredible experience compared to the last one, and I knew just after this one session what my new passion in life was going to be.

I completed the course and then both myself and Justin signed up together to take the advanced course, but both of us now sharing the same passion for diving decided to take it all the way and signed up for the dive master internship. This also meant that we would have to stay on beautiful kho Tao for at least another six to eight weeks.

We both found the work for all the courses to be very interesting but not that challenging, even the stamina and fitness training came easy to both of us as we had been competing in amature Thai and freestyle kickboxing training for the past 4 years and had attended many international and national level competitions and even competed in the world championships in Cheltenham England.

We were by now at the last week or two of our internship when the owner of the dive shop and head instructor approached us with the offer of staying on to run the live aboard dive operation as the main dive masters. We were both delighted with this offer and later found out that this had been there plan from the very beginning and they had been training us not only as standard dive masters but training us to run that specific operation.

We stayed on the island as working dive masters for the next year or so, notching up many dives to our credit and assisting in a lot of courses from open water right through to dive master, which I found to be more satisfying than just leading dives and from that point on I knew that I was meant to be an instructor.

I started to enquire about what it would take for me to become an instructor, other than the tremendous cost, and found that I would have to wait a minimum of six months from open water before enrolling in an instructor development course. We were also told by another older but very experienced dive master that we should not even consider taking the course until we had at least over a thousand dives to our credit. I thought at the time that this was very excessive but now I can really understand why.

Trying to teach someone about something you yourself have only been learning for less than two years just doesn’t make sense. How can anyone teach people how to dive in all conditions, if they have yet to experience this for themselves? I know this is wandering from the point, but one of my pet hates as an instructor is seeing people going from open water to instructor in eight months and hearing them teach about diving in strong currents and extreme conditions when the have only ever dived in swimming pool conditions such as the Caribbean or gulf of Thailand. I guess that kind of attitude comes with the experience of dealing with the problems that can arise.

Justin and I stayed in Thailand for another six months diving every day and loving every minute of it.

During the previous year, before getting to Thailand we travelled through Malaysia. One of our stops had been on the beautiful Perentian islands in the north east of the country, these too are dive islands, but the whole time we were there neither of us had dived. I did however meet someone very special there. We had met before whilst living in Cardiff, shortly before leaving on this trip. Her name was Sara.

Sara was 23 and travelling around the world on a break after studying for many years in the field of zoology.

We became partners but spending this time apart whilst I messed about with diving was really hard, especially as we had had a complicated past over the last year. But that’s another story!

Sara and I had decided to travel together to new Zealand and on through the south pacific to Fiji and the Cook Islands, where I would continue to dive as and when I could, for money or fun, but as we were spending all our time together the opportunity to dive got less and less, as did our funding.

We spent roughly nine months or so travelling on this route until it was time to go home and repair the damage we had done to our bank accounts, which also meant a hold on the diving scene. I don’t like the cold as I mentioned in the beginning and there are very few recreational facilities in the u.k. especially in south west Wales.

I took a normal 9-5 job in a hospital and worked there until I had enough money to go to Mexico to take part in an IDC at Aqua World, Cancun. I hadn’t dived in a long time and by now I was getting rusty, but it was still pretty fresh in my mind so I jumped right in.

The work for the IDC was tough. I don’t care what anyone says, learning physics again after being out of school for 5-6 years is not easy, but the hardest thing of all was being apart from Sara for all this time.

If it had only been for the time it took to do the IDC and go home again it would have not been so hard but it takes a long time to save enough money to get to the Americas, so, as I was there, I would try and make the most of it.

After I had passed my IDC with flying colours, I was planning on heading to yet another small group of dive islands, but this time in the Caribbean.

I had made some really good friends on this course at Aqua World, Cancun and they too were keen on going to check out these dive islands of Honduras. All three of us, Steve, Malin and I were fresh instructors looking for a start in the industry. What better place to start looking than on Roatan, The Bay Islands, Honduras.

We arrived on Roatan after about 5 days of travelling on chicken busses through Belize, with a quick stop at the blue hole on the way, and slight detour through the Guatemalan countryside. It was so good to finally be back on island time and not have to see the imposed American advertisements and fast food culture that Mexico offers. Getting to West End Roatan, felt as good as getting home after a years worth of traveling,  the pace of life there is so slow and so laid back, its great, not to mention beautiful.

After no more than two weeks on the island we were all working full time as instructors, putting our well spent money and newly learned skills to use. I was working for a shop called Suneo Del Mar Divers and Steve and Malin were working for a resort called Las Rocas. I was the primary instructor at the shop, working for an amazing guy called Charles Barry Ninim. Barry was an ex US marine, Vietnam war veteran, and an extremely experienced diver, who had been diving and teaching for many years off the savage coast of California, among other places world wide. Little did I know that this is where I would really start to learn about teaching scuba diving! Barry taught me many things and helped me whenever I needed it, and even when I didn’t; I think I also taught him one or two things, so you can teach old dogs new tricks!

We became very good friends, one of the best I have ever made in fact, and as he was much older than me I found many fatherly qualities that I could identify within him.

My diving knowledge and experience by now was progressing with great speed, and with this, the quality of my instruction was also rising exponentially.

Over this time of about 5 years since I started diving, I have obviously had many amazing encounters and experiences through scuba, but nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen.

It was January 2004, I think! I was teaching a class of one, a junior open water diver course. He was a cool kid, who had taken to the sport like a fish. We were heading out to a nearby dive site, no more than 500m from the shore, called Light House Reef, to conduct open water dive one. This would be his first experience diving in open water. To get to the site we had to pick our way through the reef, out of an "unmarked" boat channel at the time, and then head north along the wall for about 3 minutes.

Roatan is not well known for its whale shark encounters but Utila, a neighbouring island, is and from time to time they stray from their migratory paths and end up visiting us on Roatan. This just happened to be one of those times.

As we got out past the reef and started to head toward the site, all around the boat the water seemed to be boiling like a pan on a hot stove. This the boat captain, Marvin, quickly pointed out was Tuna. A giant bait ball that was being pushed to the surface by a whale shark. There were only four of us on the boat not including the captain, so we all grabbed our masks, fins and snorkels and jumped straight into the middle of it all. A stupid thing for me to do, I later learned!

 When the bubbles cleared I could see tuna flying at me, heading in all directions like silver missiles, none of them actually hitting me, to my surprise, as there was so many them. Then all of a sudden, there it was, a beautiful giant, with its mouth wide open and not 3m or ten feet in front of my face. Approximately 40ft in length and I wouldn’t like to guess how wide for fear of exaggerating.

I thought it was going to swallow me whole. I was so close to it and it was so big, how could it possibly move in time? Then it adjusted its heading, ever so slightly, and just glided over the top of me, missing me by millimeters. I stayed very still in the water, and it passed over me head to tail brushing me very gently or I was brushing it, not really sure which, it then dived down the wall with one graceful but very powerful kick of its tail, and it was gone. I looked up at the surface, a couple of meters or feet above me, to see my student and the other divers watching from the surface, they too had seen the whole thing and were shrieking with euphoria. What an experience for all of us, especially the kid on his first time in open water.

The presence of the whale shark lasted about another week, so most of the dive shops got to see this great beast too. Everyone was talking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking or talking about this amazing experience. Even Barry could see the excitement of it all and told me that I was lucky to have had an experience like that, as it was only the 2nd time he had seen them this close to Roatan in 4 years of being there.

The sightings had got less and less over the week and the hysteria of it all had died down because most people had seen the whale shark by now, but Poseidon had one more little trick up his sleeve left for me.

We had just finished a fun dive with some regular customers. Kristy, the dive master for the shop, and me had both been diving with this group. We untied and started our journey back to shore when Kristy pointed out another Tuna boil. We sped out to see if it was another whale shark. Just as we got to the boiling water it all stopped. The noise of the boat must have made the Whale Shark dive, as they can be quite shy. Kristy and I stood at the side of the boat peering hopefully into the blue, but there was nothing, then all of sudden, right there next to the boat was a huge dark brown shape about 1.5 meters or 5 feet wide and about 1 meter or 3 feet in length. I knew that it wasn’t a Whale Shark, and from the shape of the silhouette, I knew it could only be one thing. I jumped straight in again with snorkel and mask and when the bubbles cleared, there she was in all her beauty, my favorite animal in the whole world a manta ray!

Kristy and I followed the ray on the surface for what seemed like forever, and then, directly below us, out of the blue came thousands of Tuna followed shortly by not one but two Whale Sharks side by side! They came right up to the surface either side of us; I have never felt anything like it. I looked around to my left - whale shark! Underneath me - Manta Ray! And to my right - Whale Shark! Unbelievable! What you would give to have a camera right then. However this glorious story does have a minor down side.

When the whale sharks are around, so are the tuna, when the tuna is around, so are the fishermen. These guys fish with one long line and they tow it back and fore off the back of their boats, paying no regard to people swimming or snorkelling on the surface. As I was watching this amazing marine display I felt something rub me very lightly across my butt, strange, I thought. I looked up and around and saw a small skiff style fishing boa,t belonging to a local Rasta looking guy called Artley, buzzing around us, then the light tickle turned into a sudden sharp pain in my right buttcheek.

He had hooked me, barb and all, and was towing me through the water by my ass! I managed to snap the line and in my fury pulled out the hook too. With all my shouting and swearing, Artley knew that something was wrong and came back toward me, tangling up his snapped line in his propeller. He got close enough for me to throw his hook back at him, call him some choice names and then I swam back to my boat.

All this fishing was a small price to pay for the experience I had had, but I never thought I would be catch of the day!

I left Roatan at the end of that month, with all these memories and stories to take home. I never meant to leave it so long until the next fiasco in paradise, but the love of a beautiful woman is very strong thing, and it was to be another two years before I returned to Roatan to continue this amazing life that scuba diving has given me.

I now live and work on Roatan full time, as a scuba instructor and have had many more exceptional experiences and escapades since returning to the island, and hope to have many more.

I guess I made a choice that some would say is the right one, and that I am lucky to live this life style, but it comes at a cost like most things in life. Not only time and money, but for me, losing the woman I love, not spending precious time with my family and of course being hooked in the ass!

Who knows what the future holds for us, but one thing I know for sure is if you ever get the chance to try something new or if you have passion in life, go for it, you don’t know what might happen!

My name is Luke George and this is my story.

Crown©copyright2006 Luke George for Caribbean Diving; contact me via my email remove the bit in side and including the brackets lukegeorge50[anti-spam-remove]@yahoo.co.uk