SCUBA PIONEERS

Sometimes in the 20th century it took determined personalities to kick-start dive tourism around the world. In the first of an occasional series, BRANDI MUELLER meets two of them

ONA RECENT TRIP to Costa Rica arranged by Bill Beard’s Costa Rica Scuba Diving & Adventure I heard bits and pieces about the famed Bill, the man who brought diving to the country. On a trip more than 50 years ago he had seen the potential – but could find no one to take him out or provide tanks.

What followed was an adventure worthy of a novel. Bill & Nadine Beard video-chatted with me recently about their challenges and successes in Costa Rica, from filling tanks he had brought in his hand-baggage at the country’s only compressor through early-days diving from canoes to teaching local people both how to dive and about the importance of conservation.

As a child, Bill loved water. “We would play a game where we would bring back a handful of sand to the surface to show we had made it to the bottom,” he said.

“We would go deeper and deeper and see who won.” I believe Bill won a lot. By the time he reached adulthood he was already competing in and winning US spearfishing contests.

I asked him how he got into scuba.

“My first time was when a friend had a tank on the boat. We were spearfishing and he said: ‘Try this’. It was before BCs, and I just held onto the tank.

“He strapped some weight on me and I jumped off the side of the boat straight down into the silt. I probably had too much weight on, but I thought ‘this is pretty cool’.” They used the tanks mainly when they wanted to spear species of fish that were difficult to reach.

Times changed. Certification cards started to be required to fill tanks, and Bill needed to become properly certified. He quickly became an instructor, and started certifying his friends.