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Anees Adenwala has been associated with the sport of scuba diving for the last 16 years. An instructor affiliated with both – Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (CMAS) and Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) federations, Anees has taught and introduced several to scuba diving. Having spent years diving in various dive sites around the world, his knowledge and expertise help many members of the diving community to have fun filled and safe dives. He has also extended his scuba diving expertise to Bollywood and has helped actors explore their love for underwater sports.
Sportskeeda caught up with him for a chat and asked him about how developed an interest in the sport, how far India have come up since he first began and how confident is he about India producing scuba divers at the professional level.
Q: When did you first develop an interest in scuba diving?
A: In 1995, when I saw an image in my boss’s office. It was blue waters and white sand. So I asked him which this place was and he said it was the Lakshwadeep islands. Then he said we have to go there as an office holiday. He said we must go there as he had leased out an island there and was planning to start up a dive centre. So the office crew went there for a holiday and I put my mask on first time and put my face in the water and I could see fish. So that changed my story.
Q: At what age did you think you could make a career out of it?
A: I was actually advised that I could be a dive instructor, but never thought about anything else because it was simply the passion I had for the sport. So the career aspect was never as such, that I was going to run my own centre one day and have more people develop into instructors, who would work for their own their centres and work for many more centres. So I think it worked for me when I was 26 years old.
Q: As a sport, how far do you think scuba diving has come up in India, from when you first started out?
A: It’s a superb, steady growing graph which I have seen. Because I know the awareness has been created. More and more people are taking holidays and are looking to learn scuba and go to destinations like Indonesia, Maldives etc for vacations. So once they are planning to go there and they find out there are blue waters and a scope for scuba, then immediately the office gets a call saying they would like to learn diving here and go there and complete the certifications as it would help them save time.
Q: What prompted you to begin the ORCA dive club, in Mumbai?
A: Good question. When I moved back to Mumbai from Lakshwadeep, where I lived for a decade and ran a dive centre, we started a company called Underwater Film Services. We were doing underwater shoots for movies. That was a very niche market and the intervals between the two shoots were huge. Since I had moved back from the island with all the equipment, I felt,”why not teach people in Mumbai?” So ORCA was born then.
Q: Can you share with us details about the course structure at the ORCA dive club?
A: The course that we start with offering people first is called the Open Water course, which comes under the federation called Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). So the course is divided into three modules.
It starts with either your E-manual or paper manual or e-learning programme where you understand the knowledge development part of the course. Then you have the confined water training which is pool training and the third module is the Open Water scenarios.
So these are the three modules that combined after a written exam and satisfactory performance in open water by the candidate get certified as a diver, which means that now you are authorised to go to any PADI dive centre or any other dive centre in the world, dive with a buddy and under supervision, and can rent out diving equipment to diving.
If you are not a diver and you go anywhere into the dive centre, you have to do something called “an introduction to scuba” if you are interested to dive as you are still not certified.
Q: How many budding scuba divers do you have under your wing at ORCA?
A: We are training 4-5 students a weekend and it’s been going on for the last 8-9 months but the frequency has increased. But prior to that, we had around 200, so we are much small now. But I have been training since 1995 and have trained over a 1000 students so it’s a fun space to teach.
Q: When a youngster first comes to you, there will certainly be a sense of fear within him/her, with regards to going under water. What advice do you give him, with regards to taking the dive with more confidence?
A: See, these questions arrive at the pool, mostly. When someone is little apprehensive. Like I took a friend down diving and she had no clue about swimming. So I said try it, see how you feel. So when you are standing in the water, you are not going to drown. And if I put the equipment on your back and make you stand with it, and make you breathe through it. You try it and then you surprise yourself when you put your face under water.
So it answers your question as to how you get excited and suddenly the whole apprehension disappears and you begin to think,” Wow, this is exciting,” “what’s next”. Also, we use a nice line, Karo toh Jano.
Q: The organisation is now into its seventh year. Moving forward, how confident are you about India producing scuba divers at the professional level?
A: There are many dive centres in India. The Andamans and Lakshwadeep are the two world-class dive centres in our country. It is at par with any other destination in the world. Andamans has 15-16 dive centres. Earlier there were foreign nationals coming in as instructors and working.
Now because there are so many dive centres and instructor courses that are being in the Andamans and Lakshwadeep, there are many crops of instructors coming up who are growing really fast and they are doing well.
Andamans is opening up many dive centres as it has space has much more so does Lakshwadeep. So there is huge potential. There are also many dive centres opening up along the coastline, we have Kovalam, Pondicherry, Netrani islands. So it is always growing as the sea is huge.
Q: Finally, what is the most fundamental advice you would like to give to an aspiring scuba diver?
A: Don’t be cocky, Listen to your instructor and enjoy yourself.
