Nick started diving in 1992, training and diving with his wife, Anna, initially as a holiday activity.  The bug bit deep and it was not long before Nick was regularly diving in UK waters as well as continuing holiday diving with Anna in warmer climes.  A Sports Diver since 1995 and a Dive Leader since 1997, Nick qualified as a BSAC Advanced Diver in 2002.  He is a BSAC Club Instructor and only needs to accrue the necessary instructional hours to qualify as an Open Water Instructor.  He is a NITROX and Semi-Closed Circuit Rebreather diver.  A long standing member of the Portsmouth (East) Royal Navy Sub-Aqua Club, Nick was looking the wrong way two years ago and found himself elected as Chairman of the Royal Navy Royal Marines Sub-Aqua Association (RNRMSAA).  Throughout his diving career Nick has qualified in PADI and BSAC in parallel and he is a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor and Master Scuba Diver.  As well as diving regularly in the UK when work and family commitments permit, Nick has dived in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, many parts of the Caribbean, Mauritius and the Maldives.  His short-term diving ambitions are to teach his daughter, Anastasia, already a snorkelling fanatic, when she reaches the qualifying age this summer and to secure a place on the 2007 successor to Ex CATALINA QUEST.

Expedition Dive Location Feature:

A bright morning greeted everybody for a late-ish start in anticipation of a milli-faff prior to any diving operations but as it happened after a long safety and situation brief we boarded a diving Dhoni for the shake down dives and various kit checks.  Breakfast was as lavish as it needed to be as befitting this 5* resort.  The dive was a max 12 mtre local reef and for Stef a first open-water experience.

We scheduled the diving split into two diving waves with Stef down in the second wave ‘it all went really well, I saw a turtle swim by within a minute of reaching 9 metres then I saw an eagle ray near the drop off, I got to within a couple of feet of another turtle that was sitting under some coral and saw another ray swim by in the distance. What a first dive!’  Stef had a slight minor equipment failure which curtailed his dive by about 5 minutes but otherwise there where no other problems.

A second dive was planned on the same basis.  Between the team we managed to spot turtles, eagle ray, moray eels and, from the boat, a pod of dolphins swimming by.  On the second dive we were also requested to practice our ‘butterfly fish spotting skills’ – however in some cases more time looking at marine wildlife books were required.