Meeting the Dive Pirates

Author: Sundial

Location: NRG Center, Houston Tx

Date: 08/05/2023

Scouts: Cool Cuttlefish, Sundial, Orca, Snapper, Sunfish

Dive Pros: Sgt.Major, The Splendid Toad Fish, Queen Trigger Fish

Every year during cookie season the scouts in the Scuba Troop vote on who to donate helping heroes cookies to and this year we chose the Dive Pirates. I had no idea who the dive pirates were before they came up on the list of organisations to donate to and now I am so glad they did. The Dive Pirates are an organization that, “trains, equips, and provides dive travel to individuals with disabilities through adaptive scuba diving” as stated on their website. Recently we got to meet the Dive Pirates at the Abilities conference held in Houston's NRG Center from August 4th-6th to deliver cookies. We met two people who have worked with the Dive Pirates, one was an instructor and an adaptive dive buddy while the other was an adaptive diver. Through meeting these two people, I learned a lot about the work done by the Dive Pirates, where they operate, and the system they use to train people who have a disability as open water divers. 

I got trained as an open water scuba diver through PADI, this certification requires you to be able to complete all the skills needed for recreational scuba diving by yourself but this is impossible for some people who have a physical disability whether they are blind and cannot check their air without help or they do not have arms meaning that equalizing is made harder for them. Finding a place and organization that will certify disabled people can be harder because they require a type of open water certification with levels which is not provided everywhere. DDI, HSA, RAID, SDI, and SSI all have a certification system with the levels required instead of there just being one Open Water Diver certification; there can be Open Water Diver with 1, 2, or 3 buddies depending on that person's need. The Dive Pirates find these places who are able to certify adaptive divers as well as adaptive dive buddies.

From there, training begins as an adaptive dive buddy. You must be 18 to be certified and the certification lasts about 2 days where you are trained to help anyone with any disability who might need it whether you are working in a 1, 2, or 3 person team. This certification allows you to dive as an adaptive dive buddy and it is a great way to give back to the dive community as well as meet and dive with wonderful new people who you would probably never meet otherwise. Hearing the stories from the two divers we met was amazing, getting to see a video taken a little too close to comfort with a barracuda or talking about all the places they have been diving and where exactly was one of the diver's favorite places to go diving. 

Another thing the Dive Pirates do is plan trips. Dive trips are one of my favorite experiences when scuba diving but this can be really hard for people with a physical disability. Travelling, in general, can be hard. Just trying to find a place to stay with doors big enough for a wheelchair or bathrooms that are accessible, never mind the stairs that are typically involved wherever you go but include diving in that, planning a trip can feel like an impossible task so the dive pirates have scouted out places in the world that are accessible for people with a variety of physical disabilities and have helped plan trips to make diving more accessible to them. 

This organization is truly wonderful and I think everyone can agree that the more people who are getting the chance to dive and see and learn about the underwater world the better. Just because you have a physical disability this experience should not be cut off for you and the Dive Pirates are making accessibility for everyone a reality in diving. I would implore anyone reading this blog to visit the dive pirates website https://divepirates.org/ for non-divers think about donating and for divers think about giving back to the community and becoming an Adaptive Dive Buddy, you won’t regret it.