Szymon dembowy (PADI Assistant instructor)
Szymon Dembowy feels privileged to be working with Annie Crawley in raising a new generation of young divers and much needed ocean advocates. His love for the ocean started as a young child growing up near a small lake in western Poland. His first experience of scuba happened in the same lake using an old Russian scuba unit a friend acquired. One of the most memorable moments Szymon has as a teenager is taking his first breath of compressed air underwater, while his brain marveled at the unusual phenomenon of breathing underwater. He officially became open water certified in 2002 while in graduate school at NC State University and dove sporadically during trips through 2008 accumulating about 100 dives. After moving to Washington state, Szymon quickly fell in love with the local green waters, got advanced certified in 2009 followed by deep, dry suit, a few other specialties, and rescue diver. On the dive professional side, he finished his divemaster and assistant instructor training in 2011 and started helping training new divers through Underwater Sports classes. Soon after Szymon met one of his best friends and diver extraordinaire, Cody Teller, and Cody introduced Szymon to the amazing world of technical diving. Starting with open circuit decompression techniques and advanced nitrox, Szymon proceeded through normoxic and hypoxic (<18% Oxygen) trimix classes allowing dives to 330ft/100m in 2012. In 2018 he switched to closed circuit rebreather diving, finishing initial training using air diluent up to 130ft for Mares rEVO unit under the guidance of Mel Clark. He followed up with normoxic and hypoxic training in 2019, again with certification to 330ft and beyond.
Szymon really loves local diving in the Puget Sound, especially getting to dive each weekend with his son, Daniel, also the member of the Dive Team. In Szymon’s exploration of the local waters, he has encountered six gill sharks, great skates, sea lions and seals as well as uncounted giant Pacific and red octopuses. Szymon became part of the dive team in 2017 launching the inaugural open water summer weekly camp with Annie. Since then, he has helped with Port of Edmonds clean-ups, multiple open-water and advanced training classes, and has taken part in the most amazing weeklong liveaboard diving California’s kelp forests in Channel Islands.
Favorite park species: Anything new and unusual!
PADI specialties: Dry Suit, Enriched Air, and much more! Szymon is a technical diver and uses a closed circuit rebreather system
Favorite Edmonds Underwater Park memory: Assisting with the first summer of Annie Crawley Dive Team scuba camps
Current career: Research Project Manager at Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Medical Institute
“I speak for the ocean because the ocean has only a fraction of the land’s biomass but produces more oxygen than all land plants combined. It’s a habitat for the largest animal on the planet and it’s the least explored part of the earth. It supports all of us directly and indirectly but it is not taken seriously when it comes to conservation and protection efforts. Oceans are also beautiful above and below the surface and we need to preserve that stunning beauty for future generations.”