When I was age 8 for my birthday I got the chance to do a bubble maker scuba diving session to see if I liked it or not. It was all in a pool (not the North Sea!) and I did loads of things you would do in scuba diving e.g. Inflating my bcd (buoyancy control device), cleaning my mask, taking out my regulator and putting it back in and loads more. After that session my teacher told me I was a natural which made me want to do it again.

On my 10th birthday I was finally able to do my PADI qualification scuba course and I was so excited about it but unfortunally I couldn’t just go straight ahead and be a scuba diver: I had to do a 6 week course training to be one. I was given an open water scuba diving manual, log book, instructions for diving table and a scuba diving DVD to help me. After every week I did a test in my booklet and a pool test as well.

At the end of the 6 weeks I did a big test on everything to see what I had learned and I got 92% out of 100% which meant I could become a qualified scuba diver! However, I couldn’t become one just yet until I had completed four dives in the sea so I went to Madeira to do this. I was trained by a lady called Esther at Azul dive centre. She was really nice and taught me so well! After every dive I wrote in my log book about how deep we went down and what I saw. I really enjoyed doing the sea tests and on the fourth test I got to jump off a really high pier into the water doing a giant stride! It felt amazing getting told I was able to become a qualified scuba diver and getting my picture sent away to be printed on a card saying I was a qualified scuba diver!

By Jasmine, age 12.