Dive instructor logs 10,000th dive
Mike Schouten
(CNS Local Life): Mike Schouten, a dive instructor working on Little Cayman, recently logged dive number 10,000 in a career that spans decades as a dive professional. A native of the Netherlands, Schouten currently works at the Southern Cross Club. To mark the occasion of his landmark dive, he and resort owner Peter Hillenbrand dove ten dive sites on Little Cayman, from Blacktip Boulevard to Lea Lea’s Lookout.
Diving on spectacular Bloody Bay Wall is always an amazing dive experience, but Schouten said the 10,000th dive was special.
“This dive wasn’t about anticipation, but more of emotion and reflection,” he explains. “Thinking about previous dives reminds me of all the amazing people that I have had the pleasure of diving with, and all the extraordinary marine life that I have seen, from tiny seahorses to Humpback whales.”
Schouten remembers his first dive in the Netherlands as being very different from what he’s used to now in Little Cayman. He said he wore ill-fitting dive gear, the weather was dreary and the visibility bad.
“I didn’t know what to expect, and of course I was full of anticipation,” he recalled. “When I submerged, my gauges slipped down my arm, my mask filled up with water and I lost a fin, but I remember thinking, ‘Hey cool, that’s a starfish!’”
10,000 dives later, Mike still retains that sense of wonder and enthusiasm about the sport he loves. How does he do it?
“By looking at it through different eyes each time. There are many different ways to approach diving; a painter might look for colour and patterns; an amateur biologist might want to get better at identifying fish; another diver really appreciates geology, and I am inspired by all.”
