THE WORLD UNDER WATER

FIND THE TREASURES UNDER WATER

Somewhere Out There Diving

Somewhere Out There Diving (SWOT) was started in 2012 by a group well experienced and highly qualified divers, who felt that an entity was needed in the Gauteng Province area of South Africa to look after the needs of Technical- and more experienced divers as well as freediving and spearfishing. The main premise of Somewhere Out There Diving (SWOT) is to provide a “club-like” yet sustainable environment for a cross-section of divers from novice- up to experienced- and serious technical divers for training, to assist divers hone their respective skills and to provide opportunities for doing dive trips that are different to the run-of-the-mill charter diving at common venues.

In South Africa, in recent years, the norm has become that diving is in general only done with charters and these usually operate in a very limited amount of sites and venues. It has resulted in the industry becoming a bit one-dimensional with little variation with regards the sites that are dived as well as the type of diving that is done. Our vision is to change this. Our aim is to cater for diving of a more exploratory and possibly even expedition type, in Southern Africa, over-and-above the usual trips to more frequently dived sites, which we still visit with our more novice members, in order to facilitate their growth in the sport, also. This whole process started 2012, when the idea was tabled and in January 2013, we established the legal entity, Somewhere Out There Diving (Pty) Ltd, which we have abbreviated to “SWOT”.

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

- Jacques Yves Cousteau

Exploration

There is quite a substantial amount of technical diving training which occurs in South Africa, although most of it happens in and around the Gauteng and adjacent Provinces (North West Province where Wondergat is situated and Mpumalanga Province where Komati Springs is situated. What we see as a shortfall is that, once divers are qualified in the various technical diving fields, there is scant prospect for organised technical diving trips and charters. We feel that there is a huge opportunity that needs to be explored in this regard and this lies at the core of our mission as SWOT Diving– and that is exploration. We have embarked upon the organisation of “Specialist” trips to many possible venues scattered along the South African coast as well as inland. But exploration type trips are not only limited to Technical and very experienced divers, they cater for the less experienced divers also.