
Name:
Samuel Bennett
Where did you start diving?:
Bermuda,
Triangle Diving
What is teaching status?:
SDI/TDI Instructor Trainer
What is your favourite type of diving?:
Sidemount, Cave and Wreck
Where have you been diving?:
England, Eygpt, Cyprus, Mexico, USA, Malta, Australia, New Zealand, St Helena, South Africa, Grenada, Vanuatu, Namibia
I first started diving when I moved to Bermuda at the age of 12. I was lucky enough to do my training with not only with a great instructor (Stephen Harrold) but also to do my training through a great facility (Triangle Diving).
I feel in love with diving from the moment my head submerged under water on my first confined water dive, having the chance to learn to dive in Bermuda’s stunning waters with some of the most amazing dive sites I have ever seen is part of what allowed my passion to grow to what it is today. Once I had completed my Open Water course I knew I wanted to be able to dive as much as I could, I was luck enough to have meet the owner of Triangle Diving, Graham Maddocks, I spoke to him the day I completed my course and asked if I could come and work at the shop and be able to go out dive. Graham agreed and handed me a broom.
By the age of 15 I knew that diving is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I spend every spare moment I had down at the dive shop learning every aspect of the shop and business. I was luck enough to be able to help out in many projects that happened through the shop such as ‘Bermuda Deep Water Caves 2011’, Grouper grounds research, Lionfish task force. Through all of these projects I got to meet some amazing people and got introduced to a whole other world of diving which involved rebreathers, technical diving and cave diving, my life had changed forever.
The day after I graduated from high school I hopped on a plane and flew to Florida to complete my IDC and IE at EASE dive centre in Vero Beach. Once I had completed all my training with the team at EASE, I drove up to north Florida to complete my NSS-CDS Full cave course with Jill Heinerth, who I had meet during my time in Bermuda during the Deep Water Cave project.
I spent the next few years working at Triangle Diving as an instructor and helping to manage the shop, during the off season I would travel around the world diving and teaching as well as spend time in Florida cave diving.
In 2015, I started working for ‘Softbank Team Japan’ of the 35th Americas Cup as the teams ‘On-water Safety diving’. I work with the team for 2 years, making sure that all the sailors had sufficient in water safety training and keeping all safety, medical and equipment standards to the highest possible.
Once the Americas Cup event in 2017 was complete I headed out to Cyprus to work at a recreational dive centre for the season, I was lucky enough to gain more knowledge and insight into the industry and the diversity of how it operates across the world. By the time I had finished up in Cyprus I had longing to get back into cave diving and technical diving, so I booked a flight back to Florida and started helping Wayne Kinard out at ‘Amigos dive centre’ again. While I was back in Florida I was lucky enough to spend every day cave diving and gaining a great knowledge of all the different systems there. I was also lucky to be able to take the next step in my technical diving and complete my Trimix diver certification with Rob McGann.
I moved to Australia right at the end of 2017, starting my dive career in Australia by working at ‘ProDive’ in Manly, Sydney. Australia has an industry that has evolved slighty different from the rest of the world, which I was able to experience first hand by working in one of the highest flow certifications stores in Australia. After working in Sydney for 6 months I was offered a job down in Mount Gambier, South Australia as the Operations Manager of Reef2Ridge where I spent the next year and half teaching, guiding and exploring caves and technical diving sights.