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Nov 30th, 2009
India's FIRST EVER PADI IDC!

Crystal Dive’s Platinum Course Director Matt Bolton cemented his reputation as one of the region’s leading Instructor Trainers by successfully conducting India's FIRST EVER PADI IDC in the Andaman Islands.

The IDC, conducted at the brand new facilities of the Andaman Diving Academy in Port Blair was a huge success, producing the first EVER PADI Scuba Diving Instructors trained in India.

Matt was selected by the owner of the facility, himself a keen recreational diver, from over 1,000 PADI Course Directors worldwide to conduct the IDC.

The dive industry in India is still very undeveloped, the main area’s being either Goa or the Andaman Islands. Currently the Andaman Islands have 8 PADI Dive Centres.

Although there are plans for 2-3 more IDC’s in 2010 Matt will be unable to conduct these due to his commitments in Thailand but never the less appreciated the ground breaking opportunity to be part of Scuba Diving history!

Matt’s four IDC candidates completed the IE, also India’s first conducted by PADI staff in Port Blair yesterday. They all did extremely well and in fact scored higher scores on the IE than they did during the entire IDC!

Matt with the first batch of PADI Scuba Instructors trained in India

After lots of hard work (and even more fun), India produced its very first batch of PADI Instructors, three of them Indian nationals. The candidates were Sajeendra Das, a software engineer from Bangalore, Samuel Pinto, a Divemaster for Andaman Bubbles Dive Centre, Dr. G Dharani, a scientist from Chennai, working for the ‘National Institute of Ocean Technology’ and Stan Berlin, a construction consultant based in Bangalore.