Overcoming obstacles underwater

For many of us, the ocean is freeing and a place of great adventure. But imagine that feeling 1,000 times over when your time on dry land is full of complications and obstacles just to get around. 

A few years ago, I was asked to consult with Jim Elliott of Diveheart to help him develop a formalized training program to teach people with disabilities to scuba dive. He had already been teaching people using other programs, but he had some unique ideas on how to do it better. I traveled to Florida to meet with him and a few others. We went diving with two people who used wheelchairs to get around on the surface so I could see the transformative effect diving had. 

It was difficult for me to understand how someone could put their lives so completely in another person’s hands to take them underwater — that includes a blind person. Just as amazing to me was the skill and dedication of the divers who helped the disabled divers make their dives and experience the underwater world for the first time. When we discussed the “why?” the answer was pretty simple. The mobility and freedom they felt underwater was worth the risk and the hassle. They weren’t tied down in the water but could fly. 

That is something I surely took for granted up to that point, but not since. 

Around the same time, I was writing a series of short stories set on the fictional Withrow Key in the Florida Keys. I introduced a character who was a disabled veteran/divemaster. Zach first appears in the short story Caesar’s Gold. He remains in the next few stories and makes an appearance in the Mike Scott story The 3rd Key as well. 

Not long after that, through Jim and a chance meeting in Cozumel, Mexico, I got to know another man who is a true inspiration. Leo Morales lost his entire right leg to cancer from the hip down. When we met in passing, he had just finished the longest distance swim for a disabled diver in the island dive park. 

As I learned more of his story, I wanted to tell the world about it as well. He agreed and we got together for a series of virtual interviews between his home in Play del Carmen, Mexico and mine in West Virginia. 

He had never been diving before his surgery and took it up as physical therapy. Today, he is a cave diving instructor who travels around the world giving talks on the ocean and how it has changed his life. The book, published by Best Publishing, is called Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story and is a short glimpse into his amazing life. 

Look for him on social media to follow along on his journey. 

Diving and access to the ocean, or even the local lake, mean different things to each of us who dive, but for everyone it is freeing and an experience not soon forgotten.

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