My name is Cullen MacMillan, I am a 22 year old South African. I work as a scuba dive instructor in the BVI, I have been an instructor since 2021 and plan on being one for a long time. Apart from diving I also love surfing, hiking, and only recently have I picked up photography and underwater photography.

I started diving in 2021 right after high school. It all started with a try dive (DSD). From there my new found passion for the ocean sprouted. And now I love nothing more than getting more and more people into scuba diving.

My diving journey starts in 2021, when I did a discover scuba dive. I was instantly fixated on getting back in the water. So instead of getting a degree in business or law, I went to Sodwana bay in South Africa where I took my passion into a career.  For 2 years I stayed there building my qualifications and skills. From there, along with my girlfriend, I went to work in arguably the most famous diving location Raja Ampat, Indonesia. After a 1 year stint there, unfortunately our time ran up and now we work in the British Virgin Islands.

My favourite type of diving is hunting the micro life, searching for the critters that most people won’t even see. Cold waters, like my home town of Plettenberg Bay in the Western Cape of South Africa, house a great number of colourful animals and corals alike that I love diving amongst.

For me, the moment that starts out in my mind when it comes to diving is when I was on a deep drop site at around 40m just watching a school of bait fish in their typical ball fashion, when out of nowhere a very large bull shark charged at something larger in the ball. I am very much a shark person so every time I get the chance to be in their presence is just amazing to me.

My ultimate goal when it comes to diving is to try and get to course director one day, and open up my very own shop with my girlfriend. Once we have got enough experience and qualifications under our names. Being able to come full circle, going from just a DSD all the way through to course director and have my own shop, would be amazing, to share my passion of the ocean and its inhabitants with people is when I find peace and pleasure.

I have had Orca Torch for my whole diving career, from general use on night dives to looking in those nooks and crannies all the ways to photography use, it has been with me throughout. I use the d710 model, which I mainly use for general use and when I can I use for my photography but it is a little more tricky.

My goal is to spread my knowledge of the ocean to as many people as I can, in any way I can, whether it’s through my teaching or through photography I do my best. The best people to do this with is the youth, as they are the next generations, when you teach them about this stuff at a young age it tends to stick with them and they take it more to heart, or so I have found. To save the oceans and creatures within.

What keeps me diving?

What keeps me diving? Well, simply put I cannot stop. Seeing the amazing colours that the corals give off, the amazing topography of some reefs is just outstanding. I have never gotten bored or diving as every time I get in the water there is something new, a new species I haven’t seen or something just breathtaking like a dolphin, manta ray or many other.