What is the oldest age for a scuba diver to still be active in his or her underwater passion?
The answer is 90 years old and this was from my true experience.
I know some won’t believe this until they see it for themselves. I couldn’t at first as well. And to spend 4 days of diving with a group of elderly(70 to 90yrs old) was not in my expectation at all.
It was somewhere around the month of April, the month which the resort always gets the highest occupancy in its 6 months operation(March to August). We are talking about 100 to 120 guests at the same day, which had made me to come up with this joke, ’someday scientists are going to blame scuba divers for the global rising of the sea level’. This is the month of high expectation, anticipation and excitement. It is also the month of desperation and frustration. 120 divers with the same passion. 120 divers with the same expectation. To see if they have all the luck they need to encounter one of the most amazing shark performing their ancient rituals. The hammerhead sharks parade, the aggregation of 30 to 40 mighty sharks gliding gracefully in the blue water. If any of the divers are lucky, as if seeing the school is not enough, one of these gentle giant might even come close by to inspect, close enough for you to see the shark’s details. On a different dive however, some might missed it by a mere second before they disappear into the depth. That dive will be a disappointing one so they said. To be exact, 70% of these divers admitted of being a ’single minded’ diver, their dive trip has only one goal, only the hammerhead that matters. Seeing other amazing life such as the majestic giant manta swimming close to divers for as long as 30minutes or a massive school of bigeye trevally crossing path with another 30 pygmy devil rays never seems to please them enough. I have never grew tired of such an amazing scene. Would you?
Back to my story, I was assigned to guide a group of Japanese for 4 days. There were 10 of them altogether. It was not a surprised of course as I was already informed about it few days in advanced. However, what surprised the day they arrived was to see 2 young Japanese guys with 8 elderly people slowly walking to the reception. When I get their registration form, things just gotten better. Their average age was 80years old. 1 of them(Ikuko) just celebrated her 90th birthday few weeks before, and she has only been diving for a year. In fact, most of were. I was so sure I’m going to need an extra guide until I saw the 2 guys’ forms. They were actually the dive instructors of the group and also the organizer of their trip. What a big relieved. They assured me they are going to assist me in any way which was very cool.
It was a very interesting week for me. The dives were fantastic. We saw one hammerhead shark right above us. We had a manta ray swimming along with us for 15 minutes. They were happy. And they were as active as a youth can be. Amazing people.It was tiresome as well. We always had to figure out the best way for them to enter the water as well as to exit which was the most challenging every time. The Japanese ways of giving services has always amazed me and these 2 instructors had displayed the same manners towards their group members. I was very lucky to have them helping me out. I have to give credit to my boat captain’s professional performance during those times.
3 dives a day, water was sometimes quite choppy, some of my elderly divers had finally decided it is too much for them. 3 of them had chose to do only 1 or 2 dives a day. Ikuko amazingly did 3 dives a day without fail. How amazing that was for a 90 years old lady. The fact that she was also the ‘cheer captain’ on the boat made things better for everyone. Nothing stops her from diving. Not the swell which had given seasick to most of them nor the merciless infamous current of Layang-Layang water. Some other divers were so curious they came up to me and asked me about my dives with them. There was another Japanese diver Mr.Honda who was our regular guest who said to me that he once thought he was the oldest diver on the resort until my group arrived. By the way Mr.Honda was 67years old at that time. And he comes every year to see the sharks, so we’ll be expecting him again next year.
So do you think you can still do the things you like to do as you get older? I wish I can still dive at 60. Or maybe still do some guiding here in Layang-Layang.
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i know what i’ll be doing if i’m on my 60s. hehehe palying “futball” lah…. apa lagi…..
Lol..what else