Who Is Alex Willmott?

My name is Alex, I am the Diving Officer.

My role in the club is to oversee all the diving activities and make sure t hat all the diving we do is done safely and within the guidelines set down by BSAC.

I joined the club 5 years ago when I moved to Portsmouth to start Uni.I learned how to dive with this club and I qualified as an instructor September 2006.

I did Marine Biology at Uni so I'm an avid fishy diver! If you have any questions about diving then please come to me about them, even if your questions are outside my realms of experience I will be able to point you to someone that would be able to discuss it with you.

Another aspect of my role is to co-ordinate the instructing team. We have a large number of instructors in the club, many of whom learned to dive through the club. If you have questions about the instructors or what we do for the club, again, feel free to approach me about it.

This will be my third time on the UPSAC committee as in previous years I have also been the Equipment Officer and the Training Officer. I guess that's probably all you need to know about me?

Oh, I suppose I should also mention that I'm not opposed to the idea of cider drinking (assuming we're not about to go diving of cours e!!!).

Committee Position:
Diving Officer
Instructor Level:
BSAC Open Water Instructor
PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor
Year Started Diving:
2002
Current Qualifications:
BSAC Dive Leader
PADI Dive Master
Number of Logged dives:
300 +
Best Dive Ever:
My naked dive, see right, nuff said.
Most Educating Dive:

I did my PADI divemaster qualification abroad, it basically allows me to lead other qualified divers, by this point I'd done about 120 dives. My second day after passing this qualification I was diving with a friend who'd qualified two weeks earlier. We were responsible for taking out 8 newly qualified divers (they'd each done only 5 dives by this point! Very much a bunch of rookies). Now I have no problem with newly qualified divers, in fact several of my most fun dives ever were done with newly qualified divers but that was only 1 or 2 at a time. 8 of them at once is another matter entirely! It was a bit like trying to shepard blind puppies across a motorway. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to finish a dive but, I have to say, I learned a lot that day!

Maddest Dive Ever:
That would have to be the first time I ever dived to 45M. As we were descending I was becoming aware that I was experiencing Nitrogen Narcosis, a condition that impairs your senses and judgement. It was disconcerting but expected, so I felt ok. Plus, I had Luke (the diving officer) with me, he'd look after me. Or so I thought... We were dropping straight down an underwater rock face and were supposed to simply level off at 45M which I did. Luke however kept going... His computer had developed a flaw on the way down and was now reading a constant depth of 41.4M, so whenever he looked at it he couldn't tell he was still going deeper. I DAMN WELL COULD! I could clearly tell Luke was going deeper because he was rapidly disappearing off below me! I was trying to imagine big friendly red letters telling me DON'T PANIC but was getting tough, I was feeling extreemly light headed and everything seemed to be closing in around me, what was actually happening was that it was taking my eyes a while to adjust to the low light conditions, that didn't occur to me at the time, I thought I was passing out! Given that I was becoming increasingly alone it dawned on me that I should probably be extreemly scared, yet, oddly, it didn't happen. Instead my mind kept wandering towards things like how was I going to keep myself occupied until Lukes return, I knew sooner or later he was bound to notice I wasn't with him but instead of worrying about that I found my mind consumed with strategies to avoid the boredom in his absence. That is why this was the maddest dive of my life, it's the only dive I've done where I went temporarily mad!
Why I Want To Dive:
This is kind of a tough one to answer, I find it's almost a no brainer. I have a hard time justifying the question, an easier question I find to answer is "Why do I ever stop diving?" Simply because I need more air and cider. If I could get those two things underwater I'd never get dry again...
If I was a marine animal, what would I be?
Well, depending on which existing members of the club you ask some would already claim I'm a whale or a shark (not sure which I'm more offended by?) but I'd probably say I'd choose to be an otter, they're cool and agile, plus, hands. They're always useful. Dolphines might be bright but that's little consolation when you can't pick stuff up!