I, like most young people have struggled to work out what I wanted to do when I left school, but after gaining my PADI Open Water Licence when I was 16 I knew then that diving is something ill do for the rest of my life.
These past 9 months have been the most incredible months of my life with more incredible people and experiences. We got to enjoy things like wreck trips to the HMNZS Cantebury, Rainbow Warrior and HMNZS Waikato.
But the most memorable part of the DIPSI program was the PADI Sidemount training run by our Course Director Chris. We had a week in the middle of the program to learn how to sidemount dive, during this program we had a really memorable dive at Mathersons Bay, we swam out of the back of Mathersons island and descended on the dive, our skills and buoyancy were not what Chris expected so he bought us to the surface to discuss problems. When we descended we were on point, awesome buoyancy and you could see Chris was impressed then out of no where we hear them… squeaking of dolphins. Half way through an out of gas drill they came into view, enormous grey dolphins diving in from every angle. It was amazing there must have been 20 of them, some had calf’s who were getting so close they nearly bumped into us only avoiding us by diving out of the way at the last moment and the best thing about it was Chris was filming and got some incredible footage for us so we could remember this 40 min dive for the rest of our lives through the vid. Amazing.
I enjoyed the PADI Divemaster course most of all the programs, this is where I was really challenged intellectually and professionally and at the end scored one of the highest marks in the PADI Divemaster exam. Overall this course has made me a better human due to the awesome experiences and people from the course, Ill take everything I have learnt over the past months and use it for the rest of my life.
Callum Donald
PADI Specialty Instructor
Check out Callums Interview about the course on our Youtube channel right here: