Stuart
Stuart hails from South London, England. He initially started diving while on holiday in the Red Sea, Egypt. As soon as he hit the water, he was hooked! So much so, that when he got back to the UK, he felt the need to brave the cold waters and difficult diving conditions in England to continue diving, completing more and more of his diving qualifications, until he finally became a scuba diving instructor in April 2007.
Since then, Stuart has worked in some beautiful places, including Goa, Crete and Lanzarote. Stuart also believes in continuing his education, and since coming to Saint Martin he has completed a firefighting course, a first aid course, a VHF and GMDSS (these are courses on using the marine radio), a course on sea survival and most importantly completed his boat captains license. He has also become a Wreck Diver Specialist instructor as well as a Deep Diver Speacialist instructor and his highest achievement yet is becoming an advanced nitrox instructor which he did in late 2010.
Stuart has a great personality and we are super happy to have him here with us. With his mastery of scuba knowledge, undersea creatures and cockney rhyming slang he is an invaluable addition to the Octopus Family. We often call him “Stu” instead of Stuart, or also “His mother’s little soldier” for obvious reasons!
He has been with us for nearly 2 years now, and it is Octopus Diving that is lucky.
You can check out some blogs about Stuart here and here.
Stuart is a great diving instructor, he has an interesting, modern technique to encourage his students to use the correct signals underwater. If the normal measures aren’t affective in convincing his students to use the correct hand signs, he installs a penalty each time. He calls this a “Beer Fine.” For example, if you give Stu the thumbs up when he asks you if you are “ok” underwater, this is an immediate “beer fine”. As you can see by the photos below, he had a few students recently that just couldn’t seem to get the signals right!
