Sawasdee Khrup & Greetings from another beautiful day in the Gulf of Thailand.
Welcome to Big Blue Diving Resort, a PADI and SSI Diamond Dealer Instructor Training Facility with a bit of class & character! Established in 1991, over 17 years ago, we have grown from a small beachside shop at the end of the pier to one of South East Asia’s leading Dive operators. In fact when the founder decided to build his new Dive Resort at the northern end of Sairee Beach in 1991 the locals thought he was very brave for building that far up the beach and that he’d struggle to make a success of his Dream dive shop.
Now in addition to a very successful dive shop we also have our own restaurant, bar, air-conditioned classrooms, and the largest fleet of dive boats in Koh Tao, making the most amount of daily departures from the beach, right outside our resort.
Rain or shine, we dive ALL the time. Four seasons in one day at the moment means we can lay on the beach and cook in the mornings then run for cover in the afternoon as the heavens open and Koh Tao turns into a gigantic swimming pool. Half the staff are sunburnt while the other half look almost blue, accusations of ST Tropez fake tan use are flying around and Barry has suspicious 'goggle' rings that suggest he has a tanning lamp at home (or a thai-standard microwave oven).
Whalesharks are back at Chumpon Pinnacle although you still have to be lucky to see 'em. How you can miss a 7 metre fish is still a mystery to me but I still managed on Tuesday. The students were very understanding (at least to my face).
DMT numbers have gone up again. Please welcome Collin from Ireland. He did his Rescue course with Hal in March and now he's back on the Rock. Despite being disappointed that our pocket-size viking wasn't there anymore when he cam he back he decided to go for another round with Big Blue
Of course any business aim is to make a profit but how one makes the profit is our aim!
Koh Tao is a relaxed little tropical island paradise. The water is never cooler than 27 degrees and averages throughout the year at around 30 degrees. Water visibility often stretches 20 meters or more and the diversity of our dive sites generates continuous tourist interest throughout the year.
Our resort is situated on the west coast of the island in Sairee Beach, the nicest and largest stretch on Koh Tao. Every day you awaken to the crystal clear azure waters of the Gulf and each night we are greeted with the glowing warmth of a setting sun. There is an atmosphere on Koh Tao like nowhere else in the world. Its easy to arrive here & immediately fall in love with the island.
Our Staff realize how lucky they are to live and work here. They love their jobs and look forward to coming to work. They are able to have fun while being strongly committed to all elements of safety. The frequency with which these guys get complimented by our divers is abnormal but these guys do do a great job. All of them, our Boat staff, our Restaurant staff & all our Dive staff. Their enthusiasm is infectious and consequently the atmosphere they generate increases the profitability of the business.
Our aim is to supply you, our holidaymakers and divers, with an enjoyable and safe experience & memories that will last a lifetime. Our business is to make you happy!
The Team
When all is said & done the success or failure of any business relies very much on the involvement of the staff. Big Blue has a fantastic Dive team & we all know that every time we start a course we know this is big deal for you the students & therefore we got to make this experience the highlight of your holiday! So lets see who these clowns are shall we...
Dean Jenkins – Deano, the boy from the valleys, has also been with Big Blue for 2 years now & has proven himself to be one of the most committed Instructors in Koh Tao. A mechanic by trade Deano learnt his diving skills while on holiday, quickly fell in love with it & decided to change his career direction & became a PADI & SSI Dive Instructor. Soon, Deano was working at Big Blue as an Instructor & is now highly involved with our Divemaster training & our equipment maintenance & servicing courses aswell. Deano is another member of our Instructor team that is a PADI Staff Instructor aswell which means he can assisit in the Instructor Training of Divemasters.
Guillaume Fargues- more affectionatley nick-named 'G' for short is our French speaking PADI & SSI Instructor who has been at Big Blue now over 2 years. G is a Gaelic gentleman who knows that your diving course with us should be special which is why he’ll ensure that 110% of himself goes into every course. Extremely reliable & a good team player G is never shy of stepping forward to lend a hand. He has recently completed his Instructor Development Staff training and is looking to go the whole way to becomming a Course Director in a few years. He is also a keen rugby fan & DJ & can often be seen spinning the decks at the Big Blue Bar, when he's not on his knees in tears after losing the rugby to England... again!
Ricky McKendry- Every good dive shop needs a good Irishman & Ricky, well ... he's a good crack! He is also a very experienced Divemaster & has been with us at Big Blue for over a year & consequently knows exactly where to find all the good stuff. He is also in charge of our Equipment maintenance & is a certified Equipment Technician, every good dive shop should have one of these aswell! On top of all that Ricky is also a PADI Instructor & we have employed his Irish charms to teach a few courses in the past. He is very organised & highly responsible & takes considerable care to ensure all his divers have had a great day out on his boat.
Rick – James ‘Rick’ Rickert- Our resident Hawaiian American is an SSI Instructor & PADI Instructor. Rick is another Instructor with a nicely laid back approach to diving. He has a great sense of awareness & is very quick to help & improve his students skills where & when needed but by doing so without being all hands! Rick spends some months of the year working for our west coast Big Blue branch in Khao Lak & gets to dive the Similan Islands alot. He is also a big fan of travelling the world & likes to pop off for a jolly every now & then! He has a great sense of humour that comes out in his classes & he is the winner on every occasion for best fancy dress costume.
Simon Garrity- Worked as a Divemaster at Big Blue before becoming an SSI & PADI Instructor. His loyalty & passion for Liverpool Football Club is rivalled only by his enjoyment & enthusiasm for diving. Recently he has done a season working for our west coast branch of Big Blue Diving in Khao Lak & loves the diversity of fish life between the two sides of Thailand. He is unquestionably the one Instructor that gets the most returning customers & highest amount of compliments. Simon is exactly what you see. He is shy but friendly, funny & serious & is also a very key member of the Big Blue Dive Team.
Sonia Scott- Represented England at Rugby League & then became a Sports Physiotherapist by day & a nightclub Bouncer by night before finding her true calling as a diving professional! Sonia worked at Big Blue as our head DM for over a year & is now one of our main Instructors. She is very organised & knows exactly what is going on at any moment of the day & has worked at our west coast office in Khao Lak putting the place in order. She is a very experienced diver & does a fantastic job in Koh Tao & Khao Lak of scheduling the boats & the divesites & entertaining the crowds when out at sea.
Dan Bolton- Originally from the beautiful suburban paradise of Gravesend, UK, you might recognise Dan from a few famous movies & TV Shows with big fabulous Hollywood Stars! Dan is our Celebrity Staff! He left the glamour & glitz of acting & modelling to become one of Koh Tao’s most sought after Divemasters. When he’s not busy ‘sharing’ he can be found hard at work leading divers around Koh Tao’s many sites & will one day soon be a PADI & SSI Instructor. Dan has an amazing ability to get on with everyone, which makes him one of our more popular Divestaff all round the resort. And lately has become our 1st choice DM / Instructor for taking people on their 1st Discover Dive.Definitely a customers favourite! Sometimes 2!
Helen Sabin- Helen is a sort of Old School Koh Taoian in that she first arrived in Koh Tao in 1995. She has however been away a while & has only recently joined the team after working a number of years at different dive schools around the UK. Having seen sense she realized working in diving would actually be a little more enjoyable if she did it somewhere where it wasn’t so bloody cold so came back to Tao! Helen is a PADI Instructor & soon to be SSI Instructor & is our environmental monitor as well, which means she is responsible for Big Blues environmental awareness & responsibilities- beach & divesite cleanups, report on whaleshark sightings, & environmental support campaigns. A busy girl is our Helen!
Sanna Levin- Another one of our resident multi-lingual Scandanavian Queens. Sanna is a PADI Instructor and will also be doing her SSI crossover soon aswell & although she has only been with us a few months she has a wealth of experience behind her. She spent a number of years in Thailand working as a holiday rep in Thailand for one of the largest travel companies in Europe. She can teach in English, Swedish, Danish, & Norwegian & before starting at Big Blue has worked as a Divemaster in West Coast Australia on the Ningaloo Reef, & Krabi & Koh Lanta in Thailand. Sanna is very unassuming & friendly & has been a very well received addition to the team. She is also very patient very relaxed & finds it very easy & enjoyable teaching new students how to dive.
Hal Thorsrud- Hal has been hunting high & low for years now. He used to be a professional snow boarding instructor but it scared the Living Daylights out of him & now he is a PADI & SSI Dive Instructor. He can Take on me as he speaks a mind bogglingly impressive 7 languages – English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German & Spanish- a different one for every day of the week!Hal is originally from Norway and finds Koh Tao a refreshing change to the violently biting chill of a Scandanavian winter. Hal pretends that he has never ever liked A-Ha music & flatly denies ever having had his hair cut modeled on Morten or Mads. He also claims that at his bungalow the Sun always shines on TV.
Barry Coville- has been living in Koh Tao a number of years already & has now found himself enjoying life as a PADI & soon to be SSI Instructor at Big Blue. He’s served a number of years in the military & learnt a number of invaluable skills as part of his training. Interestingly enough Scuba Diving wasn’t one of them! Barry is also the founder of the Facebook Group “ Just say no to speedo’s “ which actually has more members than our own “Big Blue Diving Koh Tao” group, with over 1000 members! Which doesn’t say much for our group but we don’t blame Barry for that! It just means there are more people out there who like revealing their personal photo collection of men in their budgy smugglers!
James Caliendo- Not only is James a laid back Californian, he is also a fully qualified acupuncturist & also practises in herbal & chiropractic medicine & has been working aboard luxury cruise ships sailing the Seven Seas treating patients. Now he works on not so luxury dive boats cruising around the dive sites of Koh Tao. James originally came here on holiday & dived with us just as a fundiver & had such a blast he came back the next year & did his Divemaster Course with us. The next year he came back he came looking for employment. He was very quickly snapped up by another Dive school on the island before we nicked him back from them with our offer of free needles to acupuncture people with. An offer he just couldn't turn down.
Yvonne Fries- Yvonne has been with us on & off now for over 2 years. She came originally to train as a Divemaster & after completing her course immediately got work on the island at another Koh Tao diveshop. When she became a PADI Instructor she was headhunted by numerous shops and she decided to choose the sexiest shop to work full time at. After that she then came & worked for Big Blue! Great for us though I think we might have pissed off her former employer- the boss resigned! Since then Yvonne has affectionately been nick named the Germanator! Like most Germans Yvonne is a perfectionist & because she really is such a great Instructor her students become perfect divers. Yvonne is engaged to be married next year to her long term boyfriend with the 'hard stickers' but we won't hold that against her.
Emily Billingham- Emily used to work as a Divemaster at another dive shop in Koh Tao before we got our greedy hands on her! She is a very accomplished SSI & PADI Instructor who can be found wondering around the resort looking extremely pretty in the day time & can be found leaning up against the bar down the local looking downright stunning at night! Emily has been working in Koh Tao now for about a year having left the real world as a school teacher. Apparently the young teenage boys in her class had trouble focusing on their work! She is extremely patient & has a very comforting bedside manner- so I've been told! She is a fully licensed Swimming Instructor as well so she is very capable of looking after you in the water, if you ask nicely! Unfortunatley for Emily her wetsuit went missing when she first arrived at Big Blue which was obviously very annoying for her but fantastic for all the guys!
Richard Carr- Rich is the newest of our batch of Instructors but has been with us for what feels like a lifetime! He's the only one in our Instructor team that has spent most of his time travelling around in a caravan as he was born into a 3rd generation of travelling Gypsies so he claims. Brad Pitt plays Rich in the movie Snatch! Rich came to us originally to start his Rescue Course & by the time he'd left us was a fully fledged PADI Instructor. He has worked all around Koh Tao at various dive centers as both an Instructor and a Divemaster & we're proud to have this northen monkey back where he belongs, which appears to be dancing on the stage in the Big Blue Bar to 70's disco if there ain't anyone Karaoke singing!
Of course any business aim is to make a profit but how one makes the profit is our aim!
Our Staff realize how lucky they are to live and work here. They love their jobs and look forward to coming to work. They are able to have fun while being strongly committed to all elements of safety. The frequency with which these guys get complimented by our divers is abnormal but these guys do do a great job. All of them, our Boat staff, our Restaurant staff & all our Dive staff. Their enthusiasm is infectious and consequently the atmosphere they generate increases the profitability of the business.
Guillaume Fargues- more affectionatley nick-named 'G' for short is our French speaking PADI & SSI Instructor who has been at Big Blue now over 2 years. G is a Gaelic gentleman who knows that your diving course with us should be special which is why he’ll ensure that 110% of himself goes into every course. Extremely reliable & a good team player G is never shy of stepping forward to lend a hand. He has recently completed his Instructor Development Staff training and is looking to go the whole way to becomming a Course Director in a few years. He is also a keen rugby fan & DJ & can often be seen spinning the decks at the Big Blue Bar, when he's not on his knees in tears after losing the rugby to England... again!
Ricky McKendry- Every good dive shop needs a good Irishman & Ricky, well ... he's a good crack! He is also a very experienced Divemaster & has been with us at Big Blue for over a year & consequently knows exactly where to find all the good stuff. He is also in charge of our Equipment maintenance & is a certified Equipment Technician, every good dive shop should have one of these aswell! On top of all that Ricky is also a PADI Instructor & we have employed his Irish charms to teach a few courses in the past. He is very organised & highly responsible & takes considerable care to ensure all his divers have had a great day out on his boat. 
Rick – James ‘Rick’ Rickert- Our resident Hawaiian American is an SSI Instructor & PADI Instructor. Rick is another Instructor with a nicely laid back approach to diving. He has a great sense of awareness & is very quick to help & improve his students skills where & when needed but by doing so without being all hands! Rick spends some months of the year working for our west coast Big Blue branch in Khao Lak & gets to dive the Similan Islands alot. He is also a big fan of travelling the world & likes to pop off for a jolly every now & then! He has a great sense of humour that comes out in his classes & he is the winner on every occasion for best fancy dress costume. 
Simon Garrity- Worked as a Divemaster at Big Blue before becoming an SSI & PADI Instructor. His loyalty & passion for Liverpool Football Club is rivalled only by his enjoyment & enthusiasm for diving. Recently he has done a season working for our west coast branch of Big Blue Diving in Khao Lak & loves the diversity of fish life between the two sides of Thailand. He is unquestionably the one Instructor that gets the most returning customers & highest amount of compliments. Simon is exactly what you see. He is shy but friendly, funny & serious & is also a very key member of the Big Blue Dive Team.
Sonia Scott- Represented England at Rugby League & then became a Sports Physiotherapist by day & a nightclub Bouncer by night before finding her true calling as a diving professional! Sonia worked at Big Blue as our head DM for over a year & is now one of our main Instructors. She is very organised & knows exactly what is going on at any moment of the day & has worked at our west coast office in Khao Lak putting the place in order. She is a very experienced diver & does a fantastic job in Koh Tao & Khao Lak of scheduling the boats & the divesites & entertaining the crowds when out at sea. 
Hal Thorsrud- Hal has been hunting high & low for years now. He used to be a professional snow boarding instructor but it scared the Living Daylights out of him & now he is a PADI & SSI Dive Instructor. He can Take on me as he speaks a mind bogglingly impressive 7 languages – English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German & Spanish- a different one for every day of the week! Hal is originally from Norway and finds Koh Tao a refreshing change to the violently biting chill of a Scandanavian winter. Hal pretends that he has never ever liked A-Ha music & flatly denies ever having had his hair cut modeled on Morten or Mads. He also claims that at his bungalow the Sun always shines on TV.
