Returns & Referrals: 4 Aquanauts Interns Become PADI Instructors

PADI Instructor Development Course & IE- April 2011

Aquanauts' April 2011 IDC/IE Class: From left: IDC Staff Instructor Jason Orage, Course Director Roger Smith, new OWSI Amy Walton, IDC Staff Instructor Katie Moore and new OWSI Philip Kach.

He became an instructor with Aquanauts three years ago. She learned to dive with us. And in April 2011, Jason Orage and Amy Walton took further steps in PADI dive careers: He as IDC Staff Instructor, she as an Open Water Scuba Instructor.

Walton – along with Philip Kach of Switzerland – became the latest Aquanauts interns to reach the OWSI level. Their success on the PADI Instructor Exam in Pattaya also marked 46 straight months in which Aquanauts has been perfect on the I.E., the best pass rate of any instructor training facility in Thailand.

Master Scuba Diver Katie Moore also earned her IDC Staff certification.

Orage and Walton’s return was a happy one for all of us at Aquanauts. Orage was a standout candidate on the April 2008 Instructor Development Course and I.E., sailing through the exam with near-perfect scores. He stayed on and did his Master Scuba Diver Trainer, then jetted off to Africa where he worked as an instructor, taking Walton up to the Divemaster level along the way.

When it came time to become an instructor, however, Walton looked back to Thailand. Her parents stopped by the Aquanauts booth at the Dive 2010 show in Birmingham, England – where they said she might go elsewhere in the Kingdom – but after hearing about the improvements to the facilities and program Aquanauts has made in the past couple of years, she signed on to come back.

Walton has since gone on to Master Scuba Diver Trainer and is now looking forward to becoming an IDC Staff Instructor like her boyfriend, who staffed her IDC.

Kach also came to Aquanauts with the assist of a former Aquanauts intern. Fellow Swiss countryman Stefan Thomi, who became an OWSI in May 2009 and IDC Staff Instructor here in September of that year, gave Kach to thumbs up to come to Pattaya. Seven months later, the former mechanic was soaking up the Thai sunshine.