Q: Hello I’ve just had a look at the wonderful Girls That Scuba and was wondering have you faced any challenges setting up an exclusively female group? What’s the feedback you’ve had from it?
A: So yes, I have actually faced quite a few challenges setting up a female-only group. We’ve had a lot of comments that it’s sexist, a lot that it’s not needed and comments asking why we even need an exclusively female group. 1) We shouldn’t have to defend ourselves, if I want to start up a female scuba diving group, that’s fine, that’s up to me. 2) We definitely do need a female scuba diving group because the facts are in the figures, the majority of professional scuba divers are male – nearly 70% are males – so there’s a very small percentage of those who are actually professional female divers, so there was definitely a gap in the market for Girls That Scuba. Personally, if people try to give me a hard time for setting up a female-only group, I don’t really care and I’m going to keep going and keep promoting females in diving!
Q: What caused you to create the girls-only group? And what has been your funniest diving moment with GTS?
A: Well I think I just discussed why I set up a female-only group, but my funniest dive moment with girls with scuba… oh my gosh there are so many. We run GTS trips around the world, we had 12 scheduled for this year but obviously we’re going through a global pandemic, but last year we had 10 I think. We’ve had so many, but the last one that I remember was in Sapporo in January and three of the girls were celebrating milestones in their diving, like 100 dives, 200 dives and 50 dives, something like that. Instead of a normal celebration of giving a cake, the Dive Masters actually got all the ingredients of the cake and put it all over their heads. So like eggs, flour, chocolate, everything, strawberry syrup, then they just jumped into the ocean to wipe it all off. It was very funny and I was not expecting it, it wasn’t pre-planned, we didn’t know it was going to happen. So a very fun experience.
Q: What has been the worst country you have been to for pollution while diving?
A: Asia in general, I know that’s not a country, but Indonesia and also India. I went scuba diving in Pondicherry in India and there was a lot of plastic pollution on the shore before you actually get out. Indonesia, unfortunately there is just always plastic in the ocean. Indonesia and China are among the largest polluters of plastic in the world, so there’s no surprise that you actually see it when you’re in the ocean in Indonesia unfortunately.
Q: Is there anything divers can do to limit plastic consumption?
A: Absolutely – you can stop buying plastic first off! We live in a world of convenience, of fast-fashion, fast-food, consumerism, so it’s very hard for us to completely eradicate plastic out of our lives. But there are things you can do to reduce it, you can swap to products that are plastic free, that are natural, or that come with no packaging at all. Simple things, like fruit and vegetables, many of them actually have their own natural packaging on them like bananas. They don’t then need to be put in a plastic bag. Also your everyday products like your shampoos, toothpaste, deodorant, things that you use every single day, take a look at them and see how much they actually contain plastic, probably all of them. There are places that you can buy completely plastic free products. My other business is A Waste Free World, here in the UK we have an online shop, which provides people with options to go completely plastic-free with all their products. So start small, start with a bamboo toothbrush, start with a shampoo bar and you’ll really find you enjoy going plastic free.
Q: Can diving be a viable job?
A: In the current climate, I would probably say no, but that’s very circumstantial to where we are at the moment. But in general, yes. It completely depends on you as an individual. I you like lots of money and like lots of things, then maybe diving wouldn’t be such a lucrative career, however, if you’re in it for the passion and you’re in it because you love scuba diving then it is a viable job. You can go and earn a fairly low wage, but also live fairly low coat. For example, if you live some places in Asia, you can rent somewhere pretty cheap and you can still earn more than you pay for rent and for food. So you can live on not too but, but again it depends who you are as a person. Individually if you can live on little then that’s obviously what a Diving Instructor or a Dive Master does, but there are other jobs in diving, you can start your own diving company, you can start your own dive centre, liveaboard, dive brand. Then there’s definitely lots of other ways like social media, so think outside the box. Diving definitely is a career, otherwise we wouldn’t be here today, but you just have to think of creative and different ways that you can maybe earn extra money on the side, maybe picking up different jobs as well. But for me, yeah, I love being in the dive industry and working in it.
Q: With the COVID-19 travel restrictions, if they continue, will you do some UK diving?
A: Yes! We are in the midst of planning a couple of UK dive trips and dive days, because we are very aware that international travel may take some time to get back to normal and now I’ve had to repatriate back to the UK because I had moved to Jordan, I definitely plan to do a lot more UK diving. So fingers crossed we can get a lot more diving set up this year at least. So yeah I’ll definitely be releasing that and hopefully you can all join me!
Q: I believe Sarah is a DM. Does she see herself becoming an instructor one day?
A: Nope! I did my DM about 7 years ago and I worked as a Dive Master for about 7 months and the I decided it wasn’t really what I wanted to do in my career or in my life. I don’t feel the need to be a dive instructor, because I don’t so much enjoy teaching people, there’s different things I enjoy about diving and about a diving career so no, I don’t want to become a diving instructor or work as an instructor. And I’m okay with that decision.
Q: Which is your favourite piece of scuba gear that you couldn’t live without?
A: Well I’m very lucky to have quite a lot of scuba gear – perks of the jobs! However, quite a lot of it is still in Jordan because I couldn’t bring it home with me. I’ve got to say my dive computer. I’ve just got the SUUNTO D5, I absolutely love it, it’s the best dive computer I’ve ever had, ever. The technology of dive computers keeps improving and improving, it’s so exciting to watch, so yeah I absolutely love my D5. What else? Masks. Masks have taken me quite a few years to conquer. My absolute favourite mask at the moment is the Aqua Lung Plazma, it comes in so many different colours and you can change it into like a ski strap, it’s super comfortable and it looks great, absolutely loving those at the moment. And also Oceanic Mini has been my mask for years and years now, it was the first mask ever bought in black and now it’s come out in so many different colours, so for me that’s always going to be the mask that I take everywhere with me.
Q: How did you fund your travel before GTS really took off?
A: So before I started GTS, I was working in Hong Kong as a Travel Editor for a magazine and I got travelling for them to amazing restaurants and amazing bars, did their food and travel parts, so that was all funded by work. I also did a lot of freelance writing, I have my own travel blog so a lot of that was sponsored trips, different countries, tourism agencies, hotels actually send places to promote, so a lot of my travel I didn’t pay for myself, it was exchange for promotion and work. I reckon I did 2 years of that where I didn’t pay for any of the travel myself which was amazing, it was also a great opportunity to create content and to start creating Girls That Scuba alongside that as well. Now when GTS comes around, it’s kind of the same, because we have such a huge following online, a lot of people want GTS to come to their places, so I come along and some of our team. We come for free and if we like it, we write about it, so it’s amazing. I’ve worked very hard to create a lot of followings on a lot of my platforms to then exchange promotion for travel over the last few years, so I’ve been really lucky but it definitely takes a lot of hard work and determination and to begin with you live on very little, to no money.
Q: Are there jobs within Girls That Scuba?
A: At the moment unfortunately not. We’re going through a very hard time with COVID-19, with having to postpone trips and not being able to work as we usually would. So we don’t have any jobs at the moment, however, I’m hoping that when everything gets back to normal, we will be able to offer more jobs up, just like we have with our social media manager and our blog writer, and offer it to our whole community when we do actually have jobs up
To see more of Sarah and the amazing work she is doing with GTS and A Waste Free World, head over to her Instagram:
@coffeethentravel
@girlsthatscuba
@awastefreeworld
Or to one of her websites:
https://www.girlsthatscuba.com/
https://www.awastefreeworld.com/
https://www.coffeewithasliceoflife.com/
To see the original video that this transcript was taken from head to:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/diversagainstcorona/posts/?ref=page_internal
Or to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtWxbKHerc6hNChn5hudFiQ
