Jin’s Dive Herstory

If you are going to trust what we have to say, I think you deserve to know my relationship and background with the ocean and scuba diving.

In an nutshell eggshell, I have been diving a lot since 2007. I did my divemaster internship in Mozambique (2009) where I would compare it to the layman’s navy seal training then continued on to become an instructor in Australia about 6 months later (Jan 2010). Over the last 10 years, I have volunteered and/or worked in Australia, the Philippines, Singapore/Tioman, the Caribbean and Indonesia. I stopped logging my dives after about 300 (one of my greatest regrets) but if I had to guess…around 1,000 no more than 1,200. And thanks to PADI records, I have about 500 students certified under me.

When I dive I am looking for these qualities in my dive destinations, dive sites, and dive operators:

• Visibility - I really like clear water; 20m viz minimum. I used to joke that if I could not see the seafloor, I would not get in the water.

• Quiet - I do not want to cross paths with other divers underwater. I will always choose offbeat, far-flung destinations over convenience.

• Biodiversity - I want a little bit of everything. Hard and soft corals of all colours. So many fishes, that you can see layers of different species as you descend/ascend. I will always be humbled by larger-than-life pelagics and my favourite of all…sharks! Teethy ones not gummy ones.

• Safety and community connection (ideally owned and run by a community member) are the top things I look for in dive operators.

If these things resonate with you, I got your back.

• These are my favourite dive sites.

• This is my best advice to new divers.

• And this is my advice to anyone looking to owning their own equipment.

If you want to know the details, please read on.

[DOWNLOAD DIVE GUIDE TO ASIA HERE}

My grandparents always say that I could swim before I could walk. I did my first dive when I was 11 in Hawaii. We saw a turtle and I hated it. I remember the gear being way too big and we had to do a massive surface swim back to shore because my brother popped up in the middle of the dive.

Almost a decade later, I move to Australia to start my undergrad in marine biology and geology. That is when I took the plunge and signed up for my open water course. The cold water (±17°C) was bearable because on every single dive, we were with massive rays, wobbegongs, and gummy sharks and just a lot of purple-coloured everything underwater. Our dive instructor just so happened to be running a trip to dive with Australian fur seals, so I signed up for that too. So in my first ten dives, I had already seen so much, and dived in so many different conditions. I was officially hooked.

For almost every uni break after that, I went diving - I went to Great Barrier Reef, Borneo, Philippines, Mozambique and a lot of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The one break did not dive on, I was doing a paper-based internship. And when the end of my uni days was closing in, I knew I did not want to continue down the academic route to PHD, and so my backup plan was to become a dive instructor. I figured if worse came to worst, I will always be able to instruct as a backup. And that’s why everyone needs YOLO skills.

Scuba diving and instructing scuba diving have taken me around the world and because of these experiences, I made lifetime friends with whom I am still very close. Chickenfeet Travels was started because of a dive trip! And scuba diving has also brought me to places that pushed me into all of my other hobbies today: learning about and from indigenous cultures, trekking, surfing, yoga, kitesurfing, and everything about Indonesia.

The highlights have been:

1. A surprise visit from a school of wild orcas;

2. Experiencing a cleaning station where the mantas were lined up like planes waiting to land;

3. Feeling the vibrations and booms of a humpback swimming and singing nearby.

I have seen almost everything that was on my bucket list and now I only have the impossible:

1. Witness the live birth of shark pups in the wild;

2. Snorkel/dive with humpback whales and babies;

3. Become friends with a shark or manta.

And my bucket list destinations are:

1. Cocos Island

2. Aliwal Shoal and Protea Banks

3. Galapagos

During the pandemic, I did not do any dives and last year I logged 3…I saw about 10 mantas though! In 2023 I aim to instruct a little bit more and I want to do at least 20 dives. We have a charter to experience schooling hammerheads in the middle of nowhere Indonesia if any one is interested.