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Meet Alex:
Hi, I’m Alex — scuba instructor, underwater obsessive and the guy behind Diving Squad.
The story started in 2018, when I was living in England and working as an ecologist — specialising in bats! It was actually a pretty cool job, and I was well liked by my coworkers. Unfortunately, I’ve never been particularly good at doing what I’m told, and my bosses — like most bosses I’ve had — were rather less enthusiastic about me.
So I quit, packed in that version of my life and headed to the Chiang Mai SEO Conference in Thailand to start a business of my own. I learned virtually nothing, but I did come up with the name Diving Squad, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I launched the site in early 2019 from Medellín, Colombia, where I’d planned to spend eight months learning from other online entrepreneurs. Instead, I got kicked out of my coworking space after the first day and spent most of my time trying to figure things out on my own.
I’d spent my years as an ecologist saving enough money to move out and start a completely different life. By the end of Colombia, I’d burned through virtually all of it — and Diving Squad wasn’t making any money yet. I had no choice but to move back in with my parents. I refused to get another job, though, and spent the next eight months hunkered down and working obsessively on the site.
By March 2020, Diving Squad was finally starting to make money. I flew to the Philippines with an ambitious plan to dive 20 destinations across the country — and then COVID erupted. I got stranded in Puerto Galera, destination number one, for half a year. I managed to become a Divemaster while I was there, but as COVID crushed the travel industry, Diving Squad’s newly found income disappeared with it. Ten months back in England followed.
Next came Costa Rica in mid-2021 — and this was where things finally changed. I moved to Jacó, the surfing, partying and gambling capital of the country, bought a barely functioning 29-year-old car I named Señor Carro, and spent exactly a year exploring, diving and meeting all manner of quirky characters. Somehow Señor Carro survived long enough for me to drive across the borders into Nicaragua and Panama to dive there too.
All the while, I kept building Diving Squad — adding new destinations, testing gear and turning years of diving into something useful. During that year, the site finally became the successful long-term business I’d been trying to build since 2019, giving me the freedom to keep travelling and diving while running it from wherever I happened to be.
After the noise and chaos of Central America, I wanted the complete opposite. In 2022, I moved to a tiny, isolated corner of Kerry on Ireland’s wild west coast, surrounded by mountains, ocean and very few people. There were stretches where I’d go weeks without seeing another soul — which, at that point in my life, was exactly what I needed. It became a quieter, more introspective chapter: long periods alone, wild landscapes and my first real immersion in cold-water diving.
Diving Squad was opening new doors by then too, and during my time in Ireland I was invited out to dive liveaboards in the Maldives and the Red Sea — two places that had seemed impossibly exotic when I first started the site.
Then, in 2023, I finally returned to the Philippines to complete the adventure COVID had interrupted three years earlier, travelling and diving my way through destinations across the country.
But I still wasn’t quite ready to stop moving. Over the next year or so, I tried living in Phuket, Thailand as well as Bali for a combined six months, and headed back to South America — trekking through the highlands of Peru, taking ayahuasca in Ecuador and generally wandering around trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do next.
Eventually, the answer took me back to the Philippines. I returned to Panglao, became a PADI Scuba Diving Instructor and realised I’d found somewhere I actually wanted to stay. It’s been my base ever since.
Diving Squad makes most of its money through affiliate commissions. When you buy dive gear, book a liveaboard or reserve accommodation through links on the site, Diving Squad earns a commission at no extra cost to you. That income keeps the site running and helps fund the travelling, diving, gear testing and underwater content that goes back into it. It’s a pretty simple cycle: Diving Squad funds the adventures, and the adventures give me more to put into Diving Squad.
Through all of those detours, Diving Squad kept growing with me. Today it’s built around the places I’ve actually explored, gear I’ve actually used and everything I’ve learned from years spent chasing the next dive around the world.
I’ve taken a fairly ridiculous route to get here, fucked things up plenty of times along the way and definitely don’t have the origin story of your typical online-business guru. But it’s been a strange and awesome way to build a life — and I wouldn’t have Diving Squad any other way.
My Favourite Diving Squad Guides:
Diving Bohol: The Complete Guide
Panglao, Bohol has become my home base in the Philippines — and one of my favourite places to dive.
Here is where I became a dive instructor and still teach and guide dives to this day. Read on for everything I’ve learned from diving and working here as an instructor.
The Best Maldives Liveaboards
The Maldives is one of my favourite places in the world to explore by liveaboard — with incredible shark encounters, manta rays, whale sharks and an insane abundance of marine life.
My Guide to Maldives Liveaboards →
My Underwater Camera Reviews
I’ve tested a ridiculous number of underwater cameras over the years — from cheap action cams to dedicated dive cameras.
These are the ones I’d actually recommend after putting them through their paces underwater.
Check Out My UW Camera Reviews →
10 of My Favourite Dive Destinations
I’ve spent years travelling the world in search of incredible diving — from remote islands and shark-filled channels to some of the planet’s most famous dive sites.
Scuba Masks I’ve Tested & Reviewed
I’ve tested dozens of scuba masks on dives around the world — from cheap beginner options to premium masks. These are the ones I actually recommend after diving with them myself.
Diving Ireland’s Killary Fjord
I spent months exploring Ireland’s wild west coast, including diving the rugged waters of Killary Fjord.
Remote, dramatic and completely different to tropical diving.
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