Meet SEPE Diving Owner & Instructor: Steve Earnshaw
STEVE EARNSHAW
PADI IDC STAFF INSTRUCTOR (IDCSI) 428537
PADI Pro Chek™
Click Banner To Verify Professional Member Status
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Steve proposed the idea of SEPE Diving a few years back with the concept of creating a bespoke range of scuba packages designed to accommodate student divers with a varying range of learning abilities and needs.
Steve’s idea was to offer a complete range of comprehensive diver training from theory coaching through to simple in-water guidance, learning and support. Whether it’s helping you through your knowledge reviews, preparing you for an exam or building confidence for deep or wreck dives, SEPE Diving should without-a-doubt be the only place that you ever need to look to develop your diving skills.
Any experienced instructor will tell you that no two students are ever the same, and it’s vital when providing value for money and in the interests of safe diving that every aspiring or returning diver gets the absolute most they can from their diver course. We feel particulary passionate about this as after all, it’s our instructors name and professional reputation which forever remains on our students certification records.
Throughout 2022 and 2023, Steve was a valued member of the Scuba Leeds management team
PUTTING GREAT EXPERIENCES TO WORK
Steve has not only had the pleasure of, but has gained valuable experience in working with a broad range of student divers, from younger children simply taking their first ever breaths underwater, to injured military veterans learning to adapt and overcome the newfound challenge of underwater exploration. As a current serving member of the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces, it is experiences such as these which have driven Steve to re-evaluate the industry approach to fast-paced, high-volume course delivery and diver development.
Unfortunately, promoting scuba instruction in the UK, unlike our foreign counterparts, requires a sizeably larger endeavour than it does overseas. With cooler seasonal weather and sea temperatures, diving in the British Isles is neither as appealing or as readily available as it is in warmer tropical climates where the idea of learning to scuba dive intrinsically sells itself.
It certainly takes a few interesting stories and some great experiences to convince aspiring or warm water divers that the UK is actually home to some of the most spectacular aquatic life that they will ever encounter.
Steve has worked as key member of several award winning PADI dive centres
ESTABLISHING YOURSELF IN A CHALLENGING INDUSTRY
One of the biggest problems Steve regularly encountered whilst working with previous dive centres was the limitation of time. Usually this amounted to nothing less than how little a centre was prepared to pay instructional staff forcing them to push students through a course as quickly as possible. This was something which never particularly sat well with Steve. Since becoming fully independent in 2021, Steve wanted to distance himself from this conveyor-belt high numbers approach to instruction and offer a range of scuba services which gave students a better quality experience, keeping them interested and diving for longer.
PADI expectedly prides itself on the fact that their professionals are undeniably trained to an exceptionally high standard so that they are able to consistently deliver not only valuable core diver training, but also enhanced specialty skills and courses which are designed to ensure that you aim to have a fun dive, but more importantly a safe dive. Steve firmly believes that the better SEPE Diving can prepare you for all of your underwater adventures, the more likely you are to continue to progress and enjoy a lifetime of minimal risk, unforgettable diving no matter where on the globe your travels take you.
Steve is undoubtedly a Scapa Flow Veteran, maintaining many good relationships with skippers in the area
FROM COAST TO COAST
The key to being a good scuba instructor is undoubtedly patience and experience. Regrettably in recent years, the industry has witnessed an influx of ‘quarry pros’ with little to no experience out in the big blue. Steve has proudly dived every UK coast from the southern shores of Dorset and Hampshire in England, to the northern waters of Scapa Flow in Scotland. He also has experience with everything from seals to sharks and has dived globally as far and wide as Australia and Costa Rica.
When he’s not instructing, Steve loves technical diving and in particular, wreck exploration and underwater photography. He is also a qualified Gas Blending Instructor and an Aqua Lung, APEKS and CRESSI approved regulator service technician.
Steve undertook his PADI Instructor Development Course with industry renowned Course Director Colin Scowcroft of Fins Scuba, and was examined and passed in Tenerife, Spain by the highly respected examiner Chris Heitkemper.
With a staggering 21 PADI specialty instructor ratings under his belt, countless marine life encounters and time on some of the best known wrecks likely found on any divers bucket list, who better to help you start your PADI journey?
Steve has extensive experience with shark encounters all over the world.
