Dive Experience - First PADI 5-Star IDC Center on St. Croix
Award-winning Owner Celebrates 26 years and A Slot in the Women Divers' Hall of Fame!
Michelle Pugh learned to dive in LA in 1970. Her interest in marine life began with a high school class in tide pool biology. Swimming lessons and her first open water dive class at the North Hollywood YMCA followed.
Michelle dived most weekends and holidays and later worked part time with Fish and Wildlife in the summers while attending school in San Diego. In the fall of 1977, she had a chance to go to St. Croix to teach diving for three months at VI Divers Ltd., falling in love with the island and its diving and staying on to start her own business!
One of the most incredible dives she ever made was in 1979 when asked to go to Canada to photograph killer whales for a book, A Whale called Killer, by Erich Hoyt. This experience would serve her well down the road.
Dive Experience opened its doors in 1983, becoming the original PADI 5-Star Instructor Development and National Geographic Center on St. Croix. From 1996 to 2005, Michelle ran a recreational dive company at the Moscow Sea School.
In 1993, along with Jacques Cousteau, she was inducted into the Platinum Pro 5000, through SSI, and in March of 2004, she was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, for being the first woman to dive with killer whales in the wild, the first American woman to teach diving in Moscow, Russia, and for establishing the mooring system on St. Croix.
That same year, Michelle was given the SBDC and Congressional Award for Entrepreneurial Success. Toting a 100-ton Captain's License, she has been on the St. Croix Fisheries Advisory Committee and on the Caribbean Council for Fisheries Management since 1989.
Michelle loves diving and it shows! She continues to explore new regions having already chalked up the West coast from Mexico to Canada, the East coast from Virginia to Rhode Island, the Red Sea, Australia, the Solomon Islands, many of the Caribbean islands and, most recently, Borneo.
An environmentalist from day one, Michelle has taught local kids to dive for free saying, "If you can't see it, how will you take an interest in protecting it?" She goes on, "the whole world is in an environmental crisis. We need to do what we can, right here in our own back yard, to keep our reefs healthy."
