2019 was the year I didn’t renew my PADI membership, I became a PADI member in 1999 and I was very active in my early years.

I believe a diving instructor has a finite life, I was working part-time for three years, then fulltime for a five years before transitioning back to a part-time instructor for another seven years. After I closed down my dive business I walked away from the dive industry as I was so disenchanted. My business partner had left the business in a huge mess, I was left to clean up the aftermath and pay off the creditors.

My partner had fled the country, the decisions he made led to the state of the business as we had lost suppliers. We had lost our best instructor, she was difficult to deal with, that’s for sure but she did a great job. My partner’s arrogance was his thoughts were that he was now successful that didn’t need to deal with difficult people, this arrogance cost us the business. I was left to appear in court, I paid the creditors off slowly; instead he ran away, told lies to creditors and never paid his debt. 

I won’t be getting back into recreational dive industry anytime soon, the industry exploits people through low wages, poor conditions and little to no benefits. This industry tends to attract a certain type of people who take joy in exploiting people – this is unfortunate. That being said, it is expensive to run a dive shop in a retail setting, the resort style operations is more of a concern to me, that I don’t miss.