All About Gary - The Founder of Orca Scuba Diving Academy Gary you like doing silly things, don’t you? Two days later I found out what it was like breathing underwater. It was a small private swimming pool backing onto Kew gardens. Four weeks later 5 friends and I...
Scuba Diving Blog
2020: The Year We Didn’t:
2020: The year we didn’t! - We didn’t dive, we didn’t train, and we didn’t go on holiday. So with 2021 here, we have started to plan this year’s events. Once the OK has been given, we intend to make up for last year’s lack of diving. We have already been out this year...
Peak Performance Buoyancy Speciality – Our Journey
Peak Performance Buoyancy Speciality and Introduction to Diving in the UK Following on from my article about my Open Water Certification, my (that is Ashley and I) first speciality course I wanted to do was the Peak Performance Buoyancy Speciality. I chose this...
The Manatee
A blink of the eye and it’s all over. For the last 3 months I swapped the drudgery of day to day life in the UK for the paradise that is Belize. It was my first time traveling alone and I fell in love with this beautiful land from the word go! Looking back at my time...
Indonesia Scuba Diving Trip
Our trip was to be a 2 centre holiday with 4 nights at Murex Manado and 5 nights at Murex Bangka. The package included transfers to and from the centres, but what made this different was that our transfer between the centres was made by boat and we dived along the...
Moving On
It’s that time of year again when many people are digging out their dive kit after being locked away in the garage during the winter. Many of these will be getting in touch asking to brush up their skills with a Scuba Review or just want to get in the pool to make...
South Africa
As Kevin and I are merely Divemaster trainees we have been given the most envious job of letting you all know how the Orca trip went recently. There were 11 of us in total with 10 diving. The first part was six days diving in two places; Aliwal Shoal then Protea...
Philippines Scuba Diving
On Monday 11th March we embarked on our long journey to Malapascua which was our first destination. The first flight was great as we had so much room to stretch and relax as the flight wasn’t full, 7 hours later we arrived in Dubai. Walking through Dubai airport was...
First rung on the ladder
When in conversation and people ask me what I do, and I tell them that I am a Scuba Diving Instructor, I often get the reply ‘I’m a diver too!’. Once I start talking to them, I realise they did the PADI Open Water course before they went to the Maldives on...
International Women’s Day
Historically diving was a male dominated activity but more recently more and more women have joined the ranks. With a staff of over 30 volunteers, and a third of them being women, this shows a big increase from when I started over 20 years ago. I have often come...
Frontier Conservation in Fiji
After only diving for 3 months I feel like it’s a huge part of my life already. I aspire to become a marine biologist someday so I decided to volunteer in Fiji by taking part in a marine conservation project for 7 weeks. My first night was quite uncomfortable- the...
My Spanish Adventure
So an early call on Monday morning, still dark outside and off I go to Gatwick airport, to meet Mark from Oyster Diving, a London based Dive Centre, and then on a flight to Barcelona. I was lucky enough to be one of a chosen few to be invited to Spain on a...