Teaching SCUBA can be challenging for many reasons. People come to SCUBA diving for adventure, for healing, or for nature, and are often quelled from their pursuit by their own bodies and minds. As a SCUBA instructor, I try to help students get past mental anxieties, physical impairments and scheduling conflicts.  But the most challenging aspect is  teaching to instill a sense of wonder and respect for the sea, regardless of why a person came to SCUBA.

I became a SCUBA instructor because I love diving, I love spending time with divers, and I love to show people the ocean that I love. There’s a lot of love in that sentence, and because its something that I feel so strongly about, it doesn’t always feel like work. As a diver, the time I spend in the ocean makes me a better person, and makes me appreciate the planet I live on. Because this is why I dive, this is the lesson I want to pass on to my students.

 “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”-Rachel Carson

My job is keep you safe, to teach you to never hold your breath, and to understand  the physics of pressure changes.  But it is also my job to show you what I love, incite your excitement, and to pass on the torch to protect the very thing that keeps us alive and breathing.

Here’s to another year of teaching, unheard cheerleading through my regulator, and seeing the spark of passion through masks underwater,

-merbabe

One more important quote from Rachel Carson.  If I, and others who feel the same, can’t incite people to adore the ocean;

“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”