We’ll be celebrating our 30th birthday in 2021! That’s 30 years being at the top of our game. Thirty years of being recognized as the best dive centre on Koh Tao. Thirty years of keeping up with industry changes, adapting to new trends, and even starting new trends! Thirty wonderful years of changing lives. We’re an original Koh Tao dive school and we could not be more proud of having made it to this age.
In honour of our upcoming birthday – let’s spend this week telling the story of how Big Blue Diving all began.
Back in 1991, before Koh Tao was known on the backpacker circuit, and in the days of dreadlocks and 50 baht bungalows, a tall Swedish chap named Michael fell in love with an island – Koh Tao. He loved it so much that he took out a car loan from Sweden that he used to open the second Dive centre on Koh Tao island. Michael was a huge fan of a movie called le Grande Bleu, or The Big Blue, and decided to use this name for his new dive shop – Big Blue Diving. A simple car loan was all it took to start a dive school that would change the face of the island itself.
At that time, the roads weren’t paved, the local transport was a pony and getting to Sairee Beach meant taking hiking boots and at least a gallon of water for the journey. In those days, electricity was extremely scarce and unreliable, there were no phones, and the internet wasn’t even a thing yet. There was only one boat that linked the island to the mainland and other islands, the Coconut Boat. It would come with adventurous backpackers looking for something off the beaten path. Michael was able to keep Big Blue Diving going in those early years by grabbing customers off that coconut boat and by doing anything and everything to keep his expenses down (he slept in the dive centre!).
Gradually the island became more well-known and more ferries started to offer Koh Tao as a destination to backpackers and travellers. The island began to expand its infrastructure by providing more reliable sources of power, some paved roads, and clean drinking water sources. It also saw the opening of many small business and restaurants like Farangos Pizza and the Far Out Cafe, and a few dive centres too.
By 2000, Koh Tao had pretty much become an established destination for travellers vacationing in Thailand. Sairee Beach had become super easy to access and there were some lovely and affordable resorts that had sprung up in that area. Meanwhile, Maehaad started to feel like a busy little Asian harbour port and became way less attractive to holidaymakers.
After being business for almost 10 years, Michael decided to move his dive centre from Mae Haad to Sairee Beach and expanded it into a resort with accommodation, a restaurant and a bar. He also opened a dive centre on Koh Samui and set its sights on tech diving in the area. The original dive school on Koh Tao was doing so well it was multiplying!
In 2003 Michael and one of his long term Japanese Instructors, Takeshi, took a gamble and decided to open up another dive centre in Khao Lak, Thailand – Big Blue Diving Khao Lak. They offered day trips and liveaboard excursions to the beautiful Similan and Surin Islands. Big Blue Diving was fast becoming a household name in the scuba diving industry across Thailand.
By 2004, Koh Tao was competing with vacation destinations like Cairns, the Red Sea, Fort Lauderdale, and the Mediterranean as the hot new place to get your Open Water Diver Certification. To make sure that we kept up with the times and kept attracting people to our slice of paradise, Big Blue Diving knew it had to change. Michael took a gamble and decided to switch our agency allegiance from PADI to SSI. At this time, Big Blue Diving was one of the world’s highest certifying dive centres in the world. By switching allegiance to SSI that suddenly put SSI on the radars of many dive centres. SSI also made a smart move by opening their head office here on Koh Tao. Within a couple of years, it seemed PADI had lost their foothold on Koh Tao with more than 50% of Koh Tao dive centres switching their dive agency from PADI to SSI, with Big Blue Diving leading the way.
And to further our efforts to shoot SSI even higher up the dive pro ladder, we opened Big Blue Pro with our in-house Instructor Trainer, Simon Garrity. Within a year we were competing alongside established PADI IDC Centers for SSI Instructors and Divemasters.
Around 2008, the decision was made to close our branch on Koh Samui, as Koh Tao had become a Mecca for diving, while Samui was becoming a big resort island. We brought what we could in the way of tech diving from Koh Samui to Koh Tao and under the superb leadership of a very driven Instructor at Big Blue Diving Koh Tao, James Thornton-Allen, we opened up Big Blue Tech. It was the second tech diving centre on Koh Tao but it rapidly became the first choice for anyone interested in taking tech diving seriously.
We became a BSAC Dive centre too since we know how much the Brits love their wrecks and tech diving! We quickly became Thailand’s only BSAC Centre of Excellence, as well as the first TDI centre on Koh Tao.
With Koh Tao now positively booming with resorts, visitors, and divers, there was a growing concern over the environmental impacts the influx of humans was having on the island. Big Blue Diving decided to become deeply involved with the growing island environmental movement and opened Big Blue Conservation to support our efforts. Big Blue Conservation was an immediate success was plastered in awards by Project Aware, SSI, Green Fins, and the World Wild Life Fund.
With so much variety of scuba diving on offer now at Big Blue Diving, we were approached by Spanish Freediving Champion, Pepe Arcos, to open up Big Blue Freediving. It didn’t take much convincing since we knew how popular freediving had become. Pepe brought Big Blue Freediving up so quickly that within just a few months we had established a Freediving centre that was being copied by other Dive centres on Koh Tao.
So many customers and new divers were now going through Big Blue Diving that it only made sense to open up a retail centre where they could all pick up any gear they wanted to buy. We called it Drift and we focused on selling everything water-based – dive kits, swimming kits, beach accessories, beach clothing, T-shirts, dive computers and Go Pro cameras.
In 2015, we sadly had to move locations. We loved our little slice right in the middle of Sairee Beach! But it was for the best since our new location allowed up to expand and be bigger and better than we were before. We had so much more space, and so many happy customers, that we also opened our in-house video, photography and social media department – Big Blue Movies. Now we were perfectly set up to make sure that all our customers that wanted videos of their experiences could get them!
Some 30 years after opening its doors the first time, Big Blue Diving is proud to be the recipient of numerous industry awards including Most Environmentally Active Dive Centre, numerous individual awards from SSI and TDI for Highest Certifying Instructors, we’ve been labelled the Best Dive Centre in Asia, as well as had numerous awards of recognition from Trip Advisor. Big Blue Diving is currently the largest certifying SSI Dive centre, Instructor Training Facility, Freediving centre and Tech Diving Centre in Asia. And we’re about to be recognized by Mission Deep Blue for our ecological efforts at Big Blue Conservation.
Not a bad first 30 years for the original Koh Tao dive school. We can’t wait to see what the next 30 years have in store for us!
Want to come to visit us and become part of our history? Check out our website for information on all the training options we offer and shoot us a message if you have any questions!
