After working on cave diving in the Bahamas, I was set on getting some more practice to improve my cave skills while dipping my toe into some technical diving. Thus, I thought it was best to once more head back to the fantastical state of Florida and hang out with the training agency themselves– SDI/TDI. As they are a sponsor for the Scholarship and also the agency that helped the previous scholar earn her instructor certification, I wanted to stop by and work with them, too. Also, after running into fellow associates Cris Merz and Jesse Iacono at DEMA, I figured it was time. I had been in contact for months with one of the top folks there, Stephanie Miele as well as Brian Shreve and Kim Russo, and together we planned a time to meet.

Stephanie Miele

Eager to see all of the people I had talked with virtually and in person at DEMA, I arrived back in Florida and headed to Stuart. In my mind, I imagined a huge corporate building with multiple employees but upon arriving at the SDI TDI headquarters, I was surprised to find the headquarters was a small humble building next to a construction site. If you didn’t look hard enough you could miss it, and I almost did as I was walking around with my GPS trying to find this giant building. When I walked in I found Kim, who was just the sweetest thing on the planet. She took me around and introduced me to everyone. It was great to meet all the people, but what made things even better was being greeted by all the amazing canines, which to my delight, everyone had and brought in on different days (since there were so many!) As a dog person, it was extremely cathartic.

SDI TDI Headquarters

Aside from playing with everyone’s dogs, while I was there I was also tasked with working on a lot of different E-Learnings, including a VIP course, an Advanced Nitrox course, a Decompression course, and a Rebreather course. I was busy! This worked out well since during the week, the staff was inundated with their annual meeting. Still, everyone was kind enough to help me with some of the content I struggled with (special shout out to John Bentley). In the afternoons, however, I had a wonderful time hanging out with Brian Shreve, who was kind enough to allow me to stay with him. Born and raised in Wyoming, Brian has been an SDI/TDI Instructor Trainer since 2008, and prior to that operated a successful SDI/TDI 5 Star Professional Development Center in Nebraska for over 13 years. Along with his diving chops, I also learned Brian was a great cook and an avid huntsman. It was awesome to learn more about him as well as meet his wife, Laurie, who was an amazing sewing master and helped fix my travel bag (Thank You again!), and their chocolate lab, Zada, whose name, like mine, is also Arabic in origin!

After getting through half of my learning courses, it was time to do some practical application and finally explore the Caves of Florida. Brian and I went out to Cave Country, where we met up with some friends of his from Nebraska and roomed in a cozy Airbnb for the whole week. After we got settled in, the next task was going to be adjusting the gear. I was thankful to be able to borrow parts and pieces from multiple people like Peter Friedman and Heather McClosky, who were willing to lend me what they had. Once I was able to put my gear together, we drove out to Peacock Springs, which is a cave system out in the middle of Florida. I immediately noticed the caves here were different than the ones I had seen in the Bahamas. While there were fewer decorations, these caves seemed to have more winding open spaces and definitely more foot/fin traffic.

Thank you, Jill Heinerth, for such wonderful photos

It was amazing to see some of the different parts of the caves and different cave divers. While there, I happened to run into the amazing and inspiring Canadian cave diver, Jill Heinerth, who was kind enough to give me a copy of her book, Into the Planet! While there, we also ended up running into long-time scholarship supporter and Halcyon marketing manager, Lauren Fanning. Lauren graciously gave Brian and me a tour of Halcyon headquarters! It was great to see where all the Halcyon bladders, webbing, and designer backplates are made including the one that I was able to get custom-made through the scholarship! Thanks so much, Halcyon!

During my time in the caves, Brian and I practiced some different drills and worked more on my tie-offs, and skills in general. However, a new challenge that I was going to face was gas and dive planning. When going through overhead passages with depth changes, it was extremely important to prepare beforehand to pay close attention not only to the gas in the tanks but in your drysuit and your computer. It was another aspect of cave diving that makes it one of the most ambitious and difficult forms of diving. However, one of the hardest parts to navigate was when we went to Ginnie Springs. This was going to be my first cave with the flow, and as it was my first time traversing such a different and new kind of cave experience, I was blown away (literally) to learn how strong the current was. In order to get through the cave, it was important to grab onto something and crawl through. However, my first time through, I fouled up the whole dive by taking the crawling a bit too seriously and ended up crawling past our turning point. I was so embarrassed and it just proved how much I still needed to work on my spatial awareness. Still, I tried it again and managed to do much better in learning how to deal with the flow. Learning more about the caves was really fun and it was great hanging out with all of the other cave divers that were with us. I hope that in the future, I’ll be able to go back and explore even more. Thanks so much to SDI TDI for helping me get some more experience and also for the birthday wishes!

Thanks, as always, to Rolex, OWUSS, DAN, and my gear sponsors Aqua Lung, DUI, Fourth Element, Halcyon, Light and Motion, Nauticam, Reef Photo and Video and many more.