Mike started his diving career back in 1989 after a ‘try a dive’ in Corfu with a less than professional outfit. Despite this he became firmly hooked after his very first dive. On returning to the UK Mike choose the BSAC way and joined a dive club in Coventry where he learnt really useful skills like swimming with a 4Kg welt belt on in a swimming pool. After many weeks in pool training he was finally allowed to train with an ABLJ ( ask your father! Or look in a museum). Eventually in Feb 1991 Mike took to the open water for the first time. Apparently in the UK it is traditional for the Novice to breakaway the ice from around the entrance point to the dive site - this is a joke, but I actually did this! Semi-dry suits really aren’t, they are quite definitely wet and not that warm in freezing water!

            Since then Mike has gone up and up in diving circles, becoming a BSAC Advanced Instructor and a BSAC Advanced Diver and teachs on the Skills Development and Instructor Training circuits. He has continued his own education as a diver, taught many hundreds of BSAC divers of all grades and coached a number of instructors through their instructor exams and survived teaching his girlfriend/ future wife to dive too, despite her attempts at drowning him!

            On honeymoon in 1998 Mike eventually experienced warm water diving, his 2000+ dives previously having been mainly completed in British waters in a dry suit, which, unlike semi-dry suits do actually keep you mainly dry. Eager to expand his diving experience Mike, through a mutual friend meets up with City Divers and sits in on their training programs teaching diving the PADI way. Encouraged by the techniques used he enrols on a PADI instructor orientation course the following year and takes the PADI instructor exam, passing with flying colours. Throughout this time Mike has never forgotten his roots in diving however and has held positions of Diving Officer and training officer in local BSAC branches on numbers of consecutive years, training new generations of divers in both the BSAC since 1993 and PADI since 2000. Mike taught for Sussex University’s dive club and supervised Brunel University’s Sub Aqua Club’s mixed training program for a number of years, giving his time for no other reward than introducing new people to diving in a safe and enjoyable way. Most recently, Mike has converted over to rebreather diving, utilising the robust and flexible Megalodon Rebreather.

Dive experience

Cold Water

Over 2000 water dives for various types at sites including:-

Scarpa Flow, Mull, Ireland ( south and west coast ), Lake Tahoe (USA), all round the UK coast including English Channel from Dover to Isle of Wight, Wales, Cornwall, Devon Sussex, Cleveland, Irish Sea and Scotland all at a multitude of sites, the River Thames and in far too many gravel and quarry pits around the country including most notably Stoney Cove, Wraysbury and Swithland wood to mention a few

Ice diving at inland water sites ( yep, gravel pits again )!

Warm water:-

Barbados, Maldives, Grand Caymen, British Virgin Islands B.V.I. , Red Sea from Eilat down to Sharm El Sheik and beyond.

Most memorable dive.

Unfortunately Mike says he can’t limit it to the ‘best dive’ as there have been so many: -

• His first ( cold, very cold, very very cold ) open water dive in Stoney Cove.
• The first open water dive for any of his trainees. This is always special and makes all the effort worthwhile.
• Diving with wild dolphins in the Red Sea, Nov 2000
• Diving Scarpa Flow for the first time, 1993
• Ice Diving for the first time, winter 1996
• The whole week in the Maldives, every single dive was fantastic.
•  

Favourite Diving Activity: Diving