Growing my diving passion – Angel Zhou

My passion for diving started seven years ago when I saw that many of my friends were diving and I wanted to explore the sport too. I went to Palau with my sister, who was already a diver at that time, and I got my PADI Open Water Diving License there. After we were back, I upgraded it in Hong Kong for Advanced Open Water Diver including night dives with navigation classes. As I was slowly getting better at diving I was travelling yearly to beautiful diving locations like Sipadan in Malaysia, Raja Ampat and Komodo in Indonesia and Las Combos near Cancun, Mexico. This gave me the chance to explore the world’s most beautiful diving spots with friends while chartering larger yachts or on board some of my clients’ yachts. As I was continuing my adventure with diving, I got introduced to free diving by one of my clients who herself is an experienced free diver and under water photographer and I went to a free diving course in Suzhou, China where I got my 2-star license allowing me to free dive up to depths of 16m. I recently went with friends to the islands of Tonga where I was able to free dive with amazing animals including majestic whale sharks. My record free dive was a 2 minute 10 second one, while my expert friends could even reach 3 minutes 40 seconds, so I do have some catching up to do!

The next destinations on my list to visit will be Indonesia this year and next year French Polynesia’s Tahiti and Bora Bora and then the Galapagos, every diver’s ultimate diving destination. But up until today my favourite dive spot with amazing coral reef and marine life would definitely be Raja Ampat!