Logging dives haven’t always been my strength. Unfortunately. Due to this laziness I can not celebrate number of dives. So I celebrate years of diving instead. Today it is thirty years since I finished my first training course, which after another six qualification dives lead to certification CMAS Two Star certification.

From the very first dive I knew diving was my thing. I can no long recall who first said to me that diving is not a hobby, its a lifestyle, but thirty years into it I can confirm thats true.

The next ten years were training intensive. And there is always something to be learned. My last training course so far was in December 2013. Just for the heck of it, I have compiled a list of certifications here.

Diving has enriched my life in so many ways, through all the places I have been, everything I have seen and experienced, and all the people I have met.

Today must be celebrated with an anniversary dive. Lobster fishing season started 7AM this morning in Sweden, so its not a popular day to hoist the alpha flag around here. So why not go back to the scene?

Gule berget in Engelsviken, Norway, where my training finished off with two open water dives on a Saturday 30 years ago. It must be at least 20 years since I dived here, and almost like discovering the site for the first time.

The first time I jumped in here, I had a line around my waist and did little else than training exercises underwater for approximately twenty minutes. This time it was just my camera and me, doing 83 minutes down memory lane, and a few minutes of decompression.

If there is one advice I would like to give any diver, it would be to log your dives. All of them. I have lost years of logging in books, on sheets, and early generations of less successful computer logs. Today computer logging actually works, store your data in the cloud, and you can access it anywhere. If diving becomes your lifestyle, the day will come when you really appreciate looking back. I promise. Diving is as much fun at 49 as when I was 19. Its actually more fun.