Rod Abbotson

Rod started diving in 1979 with BSAC, and dived extensively in the UK. He became a BSAC Instructor in 1983,and went out to Sardinia to work as a diving officer on an Archeological research vessel MV Anoelle. He remained in Sardinia and opened Club Sardive in 1986, continuing in archeological research working with the University of Sassari. During this period Rod discovered 23 undived wrecks after much painstaking research back in the UK. While in Sardinia he became a BSAC Advanced Instructor.
He became a PADI Instructor on his return to the UK. He moved to Jordan and the Red Sea in 1993 to manage Seastar Watersports.
In 2000 he became the first PADI Course Director in Jordan.

Diving Qualifications:
PADI Silver Course Director #69259
DSAT Tec Trimix Instructor Trainer
DSAT Tec Deep Instructor Trainer
DSAT Gas Blender Instructor
DSAT Taiyong Specialty Instructor
AWARE & PPB Instructor Trainer
Emergency First Response Instructor Trainer
EFR Care For Children Instructor Trainer

The birth of Dive Aqaba

In 1996 he married Laila Manna, with her three teenaged children, Ashraf, Enas and Amjad, whom he taught to dive; Ashraf became a PADI Instructor in 1997. In 2002 Rod and Ashraf opened Dive Aqaba. Rod has since concentrated on instructor development, environmental awareness and pioneering technical diving in Aqaba. The first to introduce Nitrox to Jordan while at Seastar Watersports, he has since trained many other local instructors in Enriched Air use and gas blending. He also pioneered technical diving in Jordan and ran the first technical courses here at both user and instructor level in 2004. Dive Aqaba is still the only center in Jordan offering technical diving. Rod introduced trimix diving to the country in 2007. Dive aqaba received an award from PADI for the Best Specialty Training center in Jordan for the last two years! To date Rod has trained over 2000 divers, 1500 with PADI including over 200 Instructors.

Rod with Walter (the first technical dive course)

Also Instructor Trainer for...
AWARE Fish Identification Instructor
Clean Up Diver Instructor
Deep Diver Instructor
Digital Underwater Photography Instructor
Enriched Air Diver Instructor
Equipment Specialist Instructor
Reef Diver Instructor
Research Diver Instructor
Underwater Cartographer Instructor
Underwater Naturalist Instructor
Wreck Diver Instructor

Exploration and development of diving in Aqaba

In 2004 Rod discovered the wreck of the Taiyong which lies in technical diving depths during a dive to check the Marine Park Boundary Buoys. Since then he wrote the first DSAT (Diving Scientific & Technical) Distinctive Specialty Course and had it approved by PADI in 2005. The exploration continues and environmental research continues.
We are now an official Coral Watch operator and our tec team received an environmental award from Project AWARE.

Instructor for the following Specialty Diver ratings...
Boat Diver
Diver Propulsion Vehicle
Drift Diver
Dry Suit Diver
Multi Level Diver
Night Diver
PADI Oxygen Provider
PADI Tec Basics
Search & Recovery
Underwater Navigator
Underwater Videographer

Some notes from Rod:

On the exploration side of things there seems to be four deep valleys running to the coast in Aqaba. Three are in the Marine Park. They are basically Big Bay, Wreck Bay and First Bay the fourth is at the Power Station Dive site. These valleys provide for a wide variety of tec diving with extremely varied topography. The light penetration is amazing here, also at depth the clarity of the water improves as you get below the plankton layer. After successful completion of a deep recovery mission for the Jordanian and US Navies we intoduced trimix to Jordan, this will open up huge areas for exploration in deeper zones, maybe we will find more wrecks? Tec Team member Everette and I made a successful 100m Trimix dive at Aqaba Blue Hole - hey and guess what? You could still see the surface! What a great place for tec diving! We can now offer full trimix training to instructor level with DSAT. We have now found another 100m plus dive to the south of the Power Station named after Dorit Yoseph, one of our first trimix qualified guests. Rod's Tec pics...

Other Stuff...
BSAC Advanced Instructor #867
CMAS Three Star Instructor #1217
HSE Part Four Commercial Diver
RYA Off-Shore Skipper
City of London Polytechnic Advanced Marine Biology

Taking care of the reefs

On the environmental side of things we are slowly getting the reefs cleaner by cleaning out trash on every dive we make - why wait for clean ups? Also there seems to be less rubbish getting in the water from the beaches as the coast line is developed. This means we have to go boat diving as access from the shore is now severely limited. Commercial fishing activities have dropped but illegal sport fishing seems to be on the increase especially in the summer months so we are still spending a lot of time untangling fishing line from the corals. We are currently cleaning everyday on all sites at both recreational and technical depths.

Rod has now taken over the maintenance of our web site updating it on a daily basis. We are the one of the few sites in Jordan that validates with the "world wide web consortium"(W3C). If you would like to know more Earl, RCAmedia design consultant can give you tips and suggestions.

Get Earl's Help.

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