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Forty-Five Years Under the Sea By: John Tolmie photos courtesy Dean McCormick
D
ean McCormick found himself working weekends at his family-run dive shop in the early 1980s. “My father, Charles Levi McCormick, opened a dive shop back in 1972.” Dean recalls, “He has always lived and breathed diving. His health took a turn for the worse last year but continued to dive until he was eighty-three.”Dean’s father had hoped his son would follow in his footsteps and at sixteen, Dean began working at the family business. “I was really into music at the time and didn’t have an interest in diving, but my dad had a heart to heart with me and convinced me to give it a try.” Dean laughs, “I wanted to be a rockstar, but I figured diving for a living was pretty amazing, so I decided to put down the guitar and began my career in diving.” Dean became a certified SCUBA instructor in his early twenty’s and taught SCUBA alongside his father in Rocky Point, Long Island. Recreational diving surged in the early 1990s as business boomed for the McCormick’s.
With the demand in SCUBA instruction at an all-time high, Dean’s father purchased a building for a new shop to accommodate the sports growing popularity. “The problem was we couldn’t keep up. We had to turn people away.” Dean says, “Pool time was limited because we had to use public facilities. Securing time slots was a huge issue, so my father built a pool right next to our shop.” The aquatic addition took nearly five years to complete due to stringent local permitting. By the time the pool was up and running, 9/11 had recently occurred bringing with
it, a recession. “People understandably curbed their travel and destination diving came to a halt which nearly killed our business.” Now burdened with a mortgage on the pool, the McCormick’s decided to offer swimming lessons to the local youth. “One of our acquaintances was a lifelong swimming instructor and she proposed we use the pool for swimming lessons.” Dean exclaims, “We hired her as our aquatics director, brought on a few water safety instructors and it just took off! The response from the community was amazing!”School Of Fish Swim And SCUBA, was born as Dean and his parents enjoyed renewed success becoming Long Islands’ premier swim school. Diving instruction, swimming lessons, and selling SCUBA gear immersed the family into all things aquatic, yet Dean would soon discover freediving. In his youth, he had seen a movie called The Big Blue, a dramatic account of groundbreaking French breath-hold diver, Jacques Mayol. Dean purchased a pair of freediving fins and began diving on a single breath. “I swam to a rockpile a couple hundred yards from shore.” Dean recalls, “When I did my first drop, I saw striped bass, tautog, and scup on the reef. I love fresh fish, so I bought a speargun and started spearfishing.” Hunting underwater became an obsession for Dean and soon began freediver training.“I had been teaching SCUBA for years so I thought the course would be a breeze.” Dean chuckles, “But the physics of freediving is completely different. The course was challenging, but I passed and soon took an advanced course
