2015 - A yearly review of Atlantic Scuba's activities

2015 was a good year. We made new friends and met some old ones. It was a windy year, luckily we have plenty of shelter from most winds and it hasn't stopped us going out and going diving. Our instructors have taught a few courses, the boat has been busy, lots of locals diving too. No plankton bloom this year, although the barrel jellyfish stayed around. We didn't see any Basking Sharks, possibly due to the lack of plankton.

Notable events for us included:

• Scubafest: we set up a stand but the boat was blown out by the winds
• Baby lobster releases reached 16,000 (running total)
• Dive 2015 was, as always, good fun and although it didn't seem as busy as before, was worthwhile
• TV appearance of the BBC One Show, 2/11/2015
• Article published in SCUBA magazine
• Jellyfish footage sold to Channel 4
• Some diving footage sold to BBC too
• We found more previously un-found wrecks
• 14 photos in 1 issue of SCUBA magazine
• Sold a photo of a diver to an insurance company for use in their advertising
• Had 19 continuous days at sea with divers on board
• Stingray was used for Andy Torbet's One Show Free Diving piece shown in February
• Stingray was also used in Jocks and Nerds magazine shoot of Ian Donald Freediving
• We were a support vessel for another Rosamund Pilcher film
• We bought another boat, for personal use
• We have been looking at other commercial boat options

There was probably a lot more but don't want to make the list too long.

We have now found a Dive Computer supplier, Ratio. They have a range of dive computers with some unique features, cool looking too.

Our new dive light supplier, Big Blue, also have some excellent torch and video lights.

Kwark undersuits, I can't see me changing to anything else soon.

The shop is looking stocked now.

We have ordered even more stock since we took these photos, some has just arrived, some more on it's way.

TV, BBC One Show, where next?

On November 2nd 2015, we were featured on the BBC One Show removing a net from a marine conservation zone. We had already arranged to do it, a friend was filming, the BBC heard about it and asked if they could film it. So they did, and the insert was 4 minutes long. We have embedded it into out website - http://www.atlanticscuba.co.uk - it's just below the scroll line. It all went well and we have had some good feedback. The insert was even featured as PADI's video of the week.

Our last major TV appearance was on BBC local news, which went national, then global. It gave us 50,000 unique visitors to our website. The One Show never even caused a small peak in visitors.

So what next? We have been discussing our own program, which has developed into several options. Do we produce our own program? Get it on TV ourselves, then try to get someone interested in showing a series. A single program will cost for the air time, so we'd have to sell advertising. Or do we try and persuade a TV channel to actually fund a series.

Whatever happens next, it should be fun and hopefully, worth watching.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036yq7q