By Elizabeth Goldman
Sports Editor
Costa’s Scuba Dive Club was started by teachers Olie Smith and Ian Uhalt at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year after they realized that there were many Costa students interested in scuba diving.
The club has 43 members made up of students who are already scuba dive-certified or who want to get certified. Both Uhalt and Smith are divemasters, allowing the club to go diving together.
“Mr. Uhalt and I realized that there were a bunch of students who were interested in scuba diving, and they didn’t have a group to go diving with,” Smith said. “We wanted to make diving accessible for students by providing the support they needed to get certified and dive with friends in a safe environment.”
The club meets Fridays at lunch in room 343 where members discuss fundraising options and plan their next dive. Currently, they are holding a logo design contest and selling face masks.
“We are getting students certified and trying to raise money so we can rent out dive boats, go out to the oil rigs [and] go dive on Catalina,” Smith said. “[We’ll] do a bunch of local dives and then, potentially in the future, do a larger scale dive trip to a location further away.
The club has been on one dive at Veterans Park in Redondo Beach on Oct. 9. Their next dive will be on Dec. 18.
“We’ve been on one official dive at Veterans Park, [which is] where all of our dives will be until we’re able to rent a boat [to] go out to the oil rigs,” Scuba Dive Club president senior Lauren Ryan said. “Right now, we are doing clearance dives, so Mr. Uhalt and Mr. Smith are taking everyone out to make sure they’re able to dive with the club.”
Ryan has been diving for four and a half years and has been on dives in locations such as Belize, Jamaica, and Turks and Caicos. According to Ryan, diving serves as a great stress-reliever and is a very beneficial experience.
“I like that it’s absolutely silent underwater, and it’s so peaceful and beautiful,” Ryan said. “None of the sea life is scared of you. You can swim right up to things because you aren’t down there to hurt them, and it gives you a whole new perspective.”
Smith has been diving for 25 years. His favorite dives have been off of the islands of Zanzibar in Tanzania and Gili Trawangan and Lombok in Indonesia.
“You get to explore a world that not too many people see, and you get to function in three dimensions in a way that we don’t really do on land,” Smith said. “[It feels like you] have the ability to hover and float and fly.”
The club is open to anybody who wants to get certified or has an interest in scuba diving.
“I think scuba diving is a really cool way to push yourself to do something that, to many, is a little bit uncomfortable at first, but then opens up a whole new set of experiences,” Smith said. “It’s a good excuse to travel the world and find great diving in different places, and there’s a whole world-wide community around diving.”
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