My diving career started later in life as a Christmas gift from my daughter. Then at her insistence, we became master divers our first year, Dive Con’s our second year, then instructors. Now it’s my retirement gig!
Certification led to many diving adventures with my daughter. Initially, we spent our weekends diving wrecks or looking for megalodon teeth off the NC coast, completing over a hundred off shore dives each year the first few years. Since then we’ve expanded our horizons by leading trips to most of the Caribbean Islands, the Caymans, the outer islands of Honduras, Costa Rica, and liveaboards to Saba, St Martin, St Kitts, the Turks and Caicos, the Socorro Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Truk Lagoon and in 2019 the Cocos Islands. I also restarted Gypsy’s trips to the Keys; a must-do for the new diver.
Teaching at Gypsy gives me the opportunity to share my joy of diving with a wide variety of people; 20 to 30-somethings starting out on new adventures after starting their first jobs, 60-somethings looking for new adventures in retirement, parents and children learning to dive together for family vacations. My reward is getting the reports from their adventures or seeing their first ocean dives!
Submitted by:
Dennis L Zullig
SSI Platinum Instructor