UTD middle east
and africa
U
TD Middle East and Africa is a project that we started last year after moving to
Dubai. We had been talking to UTD Co-Founder Jeff Seckendorf for a while about
starting a UTD center, originally in the South of France. Suddenly we found ourselves next to the sea in an environment where DIR diving is in its infancy, the water
is warm, and there are plenty of wrecks. The opportunity seemed too good to miss!
The timing was perfect; Andrew and Jeff were planning the evolution of UTD into
the partner model and we were keen to be part of the new global team.
We had worked our way up to UTD Trimix 2 and were instructors with another
agency, so we decided to kick things off with the first Dubai IDC in October 2014
to join the ranks of the UTD instructor team. Jeff came to Dubai where we spent an
intense week working through our instructor training during the day and discussing
how to set up UTD Middle East and Africa during the evenings. It was an exciting
and challenging week and when we drove Jeff back to the airport we had a plan.
True to the name of our agency, our first goal was to establish a unified team. Alain
Najm, a UTD instructor from Lebanon, joined us in Dubai to run an Essentials
course in parallel with the IDC. We had also had discussions with Glenn Campbell,
managing partner of a leading technical diving facility in the UAE called Coastal
Technical Divers. He came along to join our planning sessions with Jeff and agreed
to join us in building out the UTD presence in the Gulf States.
After training some students
in Dubai and Fujairah, we
were confident that the
UTD approach would work
in the region and decided
to run our second IDC in
March 2015. Glenn signed
up, as well as Don Dornbrack, Jason Renoux and
Michel Salsmans.
UTD Instructors Darryl and Marine Owen.
Before we ran the IDC, we
decided to launch the UTD
brand officially in the Gulf