Hi there! I’m a South African expat presently living in the U.S.A. My family moved to the States when I was 17. I’ve lived in California, Oregon, Washington State, the United Kingdom and now, Florida. I hope to one day work fully remote so I can travel and dive wherever I choose as a lifestyle. After all, if that’s not what the dive life is about, what’s the point?!
Though I love warm water diving for the visibility and the ease, there’s still a very special place in my heart for cold water diving. If you know you know.
I learned to dive in a small green lake in Oregon. Visibility on the weekend of my checkout dives was somewhere in the order of 6 to 10 feet. It was terrifying and life-changing.
The following weekend, I was back in the water in rental equipment, diving one of Oregon’s best-known-to-divers lakes—Clear Lake, a frigid 38-degree Fahrenheit altitude lake with 100 feet of visibility and a 2000-year-old submerged forest. Needless to say, it was the dive that convinced me to buy a drysuit.
From there on out my life has been diving course after diving course (interspersed with real jobs that helped me afford my hobby). I’ve done everything from Scientific Diving to Technical Diving. My favorite dives usually involve wrecks or animal interactions. By interactions, I mean seeing behaviors that others don’t take the time to notice, for example, a rockfish watching two crab fight, or a flounder watching me vacuum its aquarium tank.
Today I’m lucky enough to have a full time job in the dive industry where I work as Content Director at Scuba Diving magazine. In this role I’ve had the good fortune to travel to more than 10 countries and to learn underwater photography and videography. It’s opened my mind and taken me to places I never would have imagined, like Chuuk Lagoon, a remote atoll in the Pacific that might never have even been on my radar had I not become a diver. Needless to say, working for PADI has also changed my life.
Though I don’t get to teach scuba diving as much as I’d like to these days—deadlines are real!—I’m still a PADI MSDT Scuba Instructor. I couldn’t imagine not being one, as the joy of showing someone how to breathe underwater is, in my opinion, frankly incomparable.
When I’m not thinking about diving or writing about diving or prepping for the next big trip, I’m thinking about writing novels or reading them. My great joys in life include nonfiction and YA fantasy. I also love microscopy, and though I don’t have a biology degree, I bet I can identify a good many more organisms under a microscope than a degree-granted biologist. Go on, try me!
I adore animals and, as such, have opted out of eating them. When it’s no longer necessary, why? I feel I’m living in a time that one day will be looked back upon as somewhat barbaric. Every now and then it depresses me. For this reason, I’m trying to share more plant-based recipes—to show people just how creative, fun, and positive being vegan or even vegetarian can be. Not only that, you’ll help preserve the ocean we love to dive and spend time in and that is so necessary to life on this planet.
I hope you’ll join me on this strange journey, whether that be on a boat, at a dive resort, or simply on this blog or my Instagram (@scubascribbles) and figure out how to make the life you’ve always dreamed of.
A note to PR/media reps and brand representatives: Please use my contact form on this site if you’d like to email me about writing, travel, or PR opportunities and assignments.