Sambalpur: Dubai-based girl Tisya Panigrahi has the rare honour of being the youngest scuba diver from Odisha. Ten-year-old Tisya successfully completed her professional association of diving instructors (PADI) junior Open Water Scuba Diver’s course.
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Tisya is a student of Raffles World Academy School in Dubai and she will start her Grade 5 classes soon. She jumped off into the Arabian Sea in the Gulf of Oman on the east coast of UAE at Fujairah to complete her certification dives and obtain her prized license Sunday.
Notably, she went down to 33 feet and practiced her skills in her last training dive. PADI is the world’s largest scuba diving training and certification organisation which was founded in 1966 in USA.
Tisya’s certification process involved a four-day training program which consisted of class room sessions, training in the swimming pool and finally four dives in the open sea. To be eligible for this training, she also had to pass a basic endurance test – which involved a 200-metre swim including a 10-minute floating session in sea.
Sambalpur-born Tisya is the daughter of Priyadarshee Panigrahi and Soumitri Nanda. She also happens to be the granddaughter of ex-minister late Sriballav Panigrahi and late Sunanda Panigrahi.
“I was itching to turn 10-years old, as one can learn diving and enroll for the Junior Open Water Diver’s course only after reaching 10 years of age. In fact, I wanted to do the course on my 10th birthday but, I could not do so because of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Obtaining the junior Open Water Diver license is a dream comes true for me,” Tisya asserted with a gleam in her eyes.
Tisya’s interest in scuba diving was kindled by the experiences of her father, who himself is a certified PADI Open Water Diver. Hearing about the beautiful life of aquatic animals under sea from her father, she got inclined to her father’s underwater videos and pictures.
PNN
