For a detailed view, please check my resume. If you want the story, keep reading.

Prehistory

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the ocean and its animals. As a kid, my family and I, we lived about an hour from the ocean. Every 2 weeks, we drove to the coast, for a day out. I remember collecting shells and walking on the beach, but my favorite part was searching for critters and monsters in tide pools and between the rocks. Looking at the waves, I always had a great respect for the brute force of the sea, especially in Belgium where the weather can get pretty rough. The chilling water temperature was never very inviting, but nonetheless, I always wondered what it would be like below the surface. I started collecting everything on dolphins and orcas. Then, my paper collection turned into a digital collection. We had a Windows 98, which came with a built-in encyclopaedia, imagine that! Growing up, my passion shifted to mountains and the outdoors and I loved spending time in nature. It was only years later and by coincidence, that I finally took my first breath underwater, doing an introduction dive in Turkey. I was sold.

Growing up

Arriving back home, I did my first courses and spent some time diving in Belgium, the Netherlands and Tenerife, but holding this ticket to a completely new world, I quickly wanted more. In 2012 I set my eyes on a marine conservation program in Cambodia. In Cambodia my eyes opened. I’d never spent this long away from home, alone. Walking the streets in Phnom Penh, I had my first real culture shock. But most of all, I did my first dives in tropical water and again, I was sold. The colorful fish, the many varieties of corals, the ability to dive without a thick wetsuit…Looking back the diving wasn’t even very good, but it meant freedom. I was still very inexperienced, but I started dreaming about doing this for a living.

The following summer, in 2013, I scanned the Internet for the best divemaster internship I could find and arrived with Dressel Divers in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. That’s where I become a real diver. I was diving every day, did my Rescue course and my Divemaster and guided my first dives. I loved what I was doing and I discovered a new talent, speaking multiple languages. I guess I’m lucky coming from Belgium, where we have 3 official languages, but nonetheless, I was the guy colleagues came to when they needed a translator. I loved doing our daily run on the beach and around the pool, trying to make people enthusiastic for diving and being able to address them in their own language, whether it be Dutch, English, French, Spanish or German. I quickly noticed it gave me huge advantage in trying to make a sale. Although I spoke most of the languages found around the resort, sporadically I heard this interesting sounding language, which I couldn’t understand, but loved hearing: Brazilian Portuguese. I decided to start studying the language as soon as I returned to Belgium. Once home, I did a 100-day Brazilian mission and taught myself to be pretty fluent. I added a sixth language to my skill set and I loved the new opportunities this gave me.

After spending some months in Belgium studying and working, I was ready to take the next step. I found a job as a divemaster in Hurghada, Egypt, with a Belgian diving company: Blue Paradise diving center. During my stay in Egypt, from 2015 to 2016, I matured. I went from a rookie divemaster with around 200 dives to an IDC Staff Instructor with 1200+ dives and 128 certified students. Leaving Egypt I felt confident giving every PADI course, but I’m still aware I can learn as much from my students as they can learn from me. A student diver who walks through the course without any difficulties whatsoever is a fun course to give, but the most rewarding courses are those where someone has an issue with some skills and where both of us work together to find a solution. Instructing lots of people will show you there is not one correct way to teach something, but a course always has to be adapted to the student in front of you. This is what keeps teaching fun.

Adulthood

After Egypt I returned to Belgium for 1.5 year. There I saw a whole other side of being a dive professional. Doing everything on your own, from looking for students to organising pool trainings to taking days off of work in order to do your training dives in open water. I worked as an independent PADI instructor and spent my weekends working in TODI, which is an old coal mine converted into an indoor freshwater basin for scuba diving. It was all very interesting and the drysuit diving in the cold waters of Belgium and Holland opened my eyes to a different kind of diving. After a while though, it was time again to go abroad in search of warmer, more exotic waters.

I found Rich Coast Diving in Playas del Coco, Costa Rica. In Rich Coast Diving I had the privilege be working under 2 PADI Course Directors, which gave me lots of opportunities to grow. Since August 2018 I’ve been working as the manager of the dive shop. I’ve had the opportunity to assist in a few IDC’s, which helped me climb to the next level. I’m now a PADI Master Instructor and have close to 2500 dives.

Future

There are some amazing plans for the future, follow me on facebook to keep posted.

Tom