In the last year we've seen disabled people (should I say handi-capable?) getting into diving through their own determination and help from diving organizations. On the heels of Matthew Johnson, Ross Irving Junior, and five quad- and paraplegic divers, the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project will send nine severely wounded soldiers to Bonaire to earn their c-card.WWDSP provides disabled servicemen and women the opportunity to experience water sports such as sailing and water skiing and new for 2006, scuba diving. During their July Adaptive Water Sports festival, eleven service people and their families were introduced to diving in a pool and nine of them accepted the challenge to become certified.
Captain Don's Habitat in Bonaire will host the event on October 14th. Bonaire was chosen for its easy accessible reefs, calm waters, and staff with prior experience training disabled divers. A number of dive organizations and volunteers have supported the WWDSP including DEMA, PADI, NYC Fire Department, and the Handicapped Scuba Association (HSA).
Read the DEMA press release from July (strangely in Word format rather than PDF) and the press release from August.
(Via DiveNewsWire)
1. There's a beautiful, vibrant reef just a few feet off Captain Don's back door. It isn't really shore-accessible (rather, divers have to trundle down a pier to some stairs), but a non-walking person could be lifted in and out of the water pretty easily from here. This is the single most perfect location I can think of for something like this.
Posted at 12:13PM on Sep 14th 2006 by Willy