BLUE HORIZON DIVING
MARK WYNNE AND HOLLY WAKELY (PART ONE)
We chat to Mark Wynne and Holly Wakely about their growing YouTube Channel, what they love about teaching people to dive, and why it is important to get more youngsters into the sport Photographs courtesy of Mark Wynne, Holly Wakely and Margo Peyton
Q: How did you first get into diving? A (MW): As a youngster I always wanted to learn how to dive after watching Blue Planet, I know, super cliché. This seems to be the way most divers in the UK start, but I didn’t realize it was even an option when growing up in Scotland and the South of England. In 2006 our family took a trip to Fuerteventura, and after an unlikely banana boat incident, I was able to take my first breaths underwater. During the trip, my wee sister Chloe decided to go on a banana boat the day before our Discover Scuba Dive experience. After asking for ‘just one more run’, she got a head injury and wasn’t allowed to dive the next day. The dive centre suggested instead of a refund for Chloe’s experience, I should do the PADI Scuba Diver course. I did and fell in love with the sport, seeing angel sharks and rays everywhere. A year later, not much progression had occurred in my diving career, due to that freezing Scottish water, until a trip to Bulgaria in the Black Sea. All excited to be diving again as a PADI Scuba Diver allowed to only 12m with a professional, I learnt not to always just trust the dive centre or club you are diving with. Being naïve with only two dives, I was shocked to discover, when completing our logbooks, my third dive was penetrating a wreck at 32m in the Black Sea. I decided at that point it was time to reach out to dive centres in Scotland to learn to dive properly and get my Open Water certification, even if it is in the freezing winter in Scotland. The rest is history - after those few cold dives I was fully hooked.
Mark enjoying diving in Turks
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World first - Holly being presented with her PADI Junior Divemaster certificate Holly blowing bubble rings in Palau
Christmas diving in Bermuda
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