"Me as Dive Master" a Umkomaas Travel Page by MikeAtSea

One of my passions that I discovered rather late is diving. After having taken a year of corporate life I chose to become a dive master, and worked half in a hotel and the other time in a dive centre on the KwaZulu Natal South Coast, in the town of Umkomaas.
Umkomaas is situated at one of the top ten dive sites in the world - Aliwal Shoal, a great shark diving spot.
Groups normally would consist of ten divers and myself, leading the dive.

Here you can see me doing my briefing on the beach. Being the dive leader it was my responsibility to bring everyone back again, since I was not diving with the same group everytime a lot of new divers came to my group. Within such a briefing I would inform "my" divers about current, conditions, where we would go, and according to divers qualification also how deep or if a wreck would be visited.

In Umkomaas dives all operate to the dive site in boats as one can see on the pictures. The dive site was about 8 km out to sea, and experienced skipper would take us there. Once at the site, which was determined by GPS or landmarks the skipper would give the command, three two one go! And we would all roll back and start our dive.

My time in Umkomaas was also spent with teaching to dive. Discover Scuba Programs which a Divemaster was able to do alone, or assisting an Instructor with teaching students to dive.
Here I am in the pool with our compressor boy Chris, who wanted to learn how to dive, though in the beginning I realized I had to teach him how to swim first :-)

In 2006 I did some great dives on the East Coast of South Africa, some 350 dives within 7 months, and I learnt a lot. To treasure the last resources we have, and particulary those of which we know very little about - the sea. Overfishing, shark finning and pollution plus a lot more destroy our oceans, and ultimatley will destroy our planet.
A big thank to all the divers who made my time as a "beach bum" a great one!! Now back in corporate life I treasure all the good moments - the bad once I will simply forget :-)