Divers taking the plunge with business

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This article was published 13/08/2014 (4252 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Put on your goggles and flippers, there’s a new scuba diving venue in town.

Blue Oasis Dive Centre will be holding its grand opening on Aug. 16 at its location at 1108-B Henderson Hwy.

Owner Jason Herlick and store manager Michelle Wetton bring 20 years of combined scuba diving experience to the business and are looking to share their knowledge and passion with the city of Winnipeg.

“I originally was going to get into underwater welding,” Herlick said. “I figured I’d try out recreational diving before I got into it. I got addicted to the underwater world, I started teaching it, and I haven’t been able to stop since then.

“The natural progression of a diving instructor is to one day own your own business.”

“I came across diving in a different way that Jason,” Wetton said. “I saw The Little Mermaid as a young girl and instantly fell in love with the underwater world. I always wanted to be a mermaid and scuba diving was one of the closest ways I could get to do that. So that’s how I got into diving at a young age.”

Now with a master’s degree in Biology, diving has carved a path for Wetton along the way.

“Learning to dive was the natural part of a future career that I wanted to have,” she said.

Herlick and Wetton have been working side-by-side for the past 10 years.

“We complement each other well,” Wetton said. “Opening up a new business just felt like it was the next step in our working relationship with each other.”

The process to becoming a full-fledged instructor comes down one’s dedication to the craft, according to Herlick.

“You get your open-water diver certification and then start accumulating dives,” he said. “You can further your diving education by taking specialty courses as well, such as navigation, underwater photography, night diving and dry suit diving. Once you have those you can become an assistant instructor and then progress into an open-water instructor.

Herlick said the time-frame to get to the top varies from person-to-person.

“You can do it in as little as a year if you dedicate and really push yourself,” he said.

Blue Oasis will offer retail sales, including all things diving-related, as well as rentals, servicing and maintenance and local and exotic diving trips.

Herlick and Wetton will also offer a program called the Scuba Rangers. Scuba Rangers is for kids 8 to 12 years of age, with the sole purpose of getting the kids used to being under water and just having fun.

“Michelle is actually the one who brought it into Manitoba,” said Herlick. “It’s a great chance for kids to get introduced to diving.”

Herlick also offers the opportunity for qualified individuals to get their master diver certification.

Blue Oasis’ grand opening will have giveaways, product demonstrations, food and fun for everyone who makes it out. At 10 a.m. there will also be a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially get Blue Oasis running.

“People can come check out our new facility, we are really excited about how it has turned out,” said Wetton. “We call it Blue Oasis because as soon as you walk in, it’s like you’re instantly transported to the tropics, it is really an oasis in the middle of Winnipeg.”

You can visit the new location at 1108-B Henderson Hwy and you can visit the centre’s website at http://www.blueoasis.ca/

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