Page 34 - KSC Magazine 2020

(From left to right) Abel, Sharalyn, Ellie and Adam Summers enjoyed their first Kids Sea Camp at Buddy Dive, Bonaire during Thanksgiving .
A blazing summer day in Santa Monica, a house with a pool, an adult party, and a thirteen-year-old boy at loose ends. That’s how I first went diving. I was at the bottom of the pool on a J-valve tank, with a twin hose reg that I figured out pool side when adults started jumping into the water to ‘rescue’ me. More than forty years and 2000 dives later I found a very different sort of rescue that has revitalized my love of blowing bubbles.
I officially learned to dive while an undergraduate and went all the way through the ranks to OWSI at the PADI College in Sydney,Australia. I worked as an instructor in Australia, then returned home to the USA and became a marine biologist.Along the
way, there have been many important dives. But those dives pale in signifi- cance to the life changes. I married in Belize. Sharalyn and I had two children, and we moved to a small island north of Seattle to a marine station.
A little moment, a shared sense of wonder, and an instant rapport gave me an unusual opportunity to get a com- pletely new, and wholly transformative view of diving.With my good friend
Dr. Bob Rubin, I voyaged on the Quino El Guardian to the manta ray soup of the Revillagigedo Islands.They dropped us and 14 other dive fanatics into the water surrounding four little volcanic specks. Steep sided, battered by swell, with a constant current, this dive site was not for the faint of heart. But when
we dropped over the side the first time, there was a whale shark, 6 giant ocean mantas, a pod of dolphins, and more than 40 silky sharks, and ...you get the idea.
It was SCUBA paradise. I loved it,
and I was getting interesting data on wing movements in the mantas.As I stripped out of my too-thin wet suit I realized the guy standing next to me had paused, a silly grin on his face, wet suit around his ankles and heel straps between his toes, eyes twinkling away. This bearded, blissed-out guy was just dumbstruck by that dive and was taking a few moments to really let it sink in.
I don’t meet many people who take time to savor life’s treats as much as I do, and I was immediately drawn to this
www.familydivers.com
803-419-2556 email: dive@familydivers.com www.oceanwishes.org
TAKE TIME TO SAVOR LIFE'S TREATS