Denmark: a dream world for diving… if you like icy cold water, underwater currents, and terrible visibility. All the more reason our #DiveWithMe photo contest winners Anna Starup and Theresa Torp are absolutely over the moon about their upcoming trip to the Philippines, where they’ll be staying at the Atmosphere Resorts, and hoping to put over a dozen dives in the logbook. For Anna, it will be her first underwater experience, while for Theresa, it’s the continuation of a passion that’s directed her life over the last few years! We chatted with the girls to find out what’s making them feel giddy about the upcoming trip.
Anna (left) and Theresa (right) are already in the Philippines getting ready for their dive adventure.
Real quick – give us a bio in a nutshell!
Anna Starup: My name is Anna and I spend my days in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I study anthropology. I live in a big house north of the city with some good friends and take advantage of the location right by the ocean. I go winter swimming and kayaking a lot and have recently made a try at windsurfing. It gives me great quality of life, daily, having the ocean basically in my front yard. I am absolutely ecstatic that I now get the opportunity to explore the ocean through diving, which has been a dream of mine for many years!
Theresa Torp: I’m a 24-year-old Occupational-therapy student, who lives in western Denmark in an apartment with my boyfriend. When I’m not studying, I work as a Social Media Manager for a travel agency, which I’m really passionate about as I love to travel, love to write and love photograhy! At the same time, it gives me a great opportunity to save money for scuba diving and explore the world whenever the school lets us off the hook.
Diving + Denmark? Huh? Why is it interesting for Danish people to scuba dive?
Theresa: To be honest, Denmark isn’t really the ideal place for scuba diving. It’s known for green water, bad visibility, underwater currents and icy cold temperatures. Those are some of the many reasons why we like to travel as often as possible! But that being said, there are a lot of awesome shipwrecks, and the rough conditions make a great place for practice between our travels. You get tough diving in Denmark!
Theresa, tell us your SCUBA story!
When I graduated from High School I decided to take a year off (pretty common in Denmark) to explore the world before continuing on to university. At my first destination, Brazil, I met the most amazing and inspiring people – a marine-biologist and a dive instructor, who was a part of a unique and really cool scuba diving community in Porto De Galinhas. I was extremely fascinated about their way of living, and even though I had already decided to do my PADI Open Water before I went overseas, I’m pretty sure that they’re the reason that scuba diving has become such a big part of who I am today. Since then I’ve lived out numerous irreplaceable adventures underwater, and at the age of 22 I extended my certification to Advanced at Key Largo in southern Florida!
Anna – you don’t even dive yet! What’s in this for you?
Anna: I’m the sort of type that gets restless if I stay in the same place more than six months at a time. Because of this I tend to travel quite a lot during the year, and I have also lived outside of Denmark several times. But I think this trip is going to stand out – it’s going to be a whole new adventure, both over and under the sea, and I get to share it with one of my very best friends.
"Atmosphere Resorts, here we come!"
Have either of you ever been to the Philippines before?
Anna: No, the closest is probably Indonesia – I lived and worked there for three months a few years back.
Theresa: Nope, it will be my first time exploring Asia – and I couldn’t be more excited!
Anna, you don’t dive, yet – but you’ve started studying your theory already.
Anna: Yep – I took an online course, PADI Open Water Touch e-learning package.
It’s definitely a different way to learn! All the theory is about things and gear I have absolutely no experience with and never seen or touched before. On the other hand it has made me really eager to put all the things into practice!
Theresa – will it be nice to have a new dive partner back home?
Theresa: I’m sure that the cold water in Denmark will seem a bit more appealing when I can share it with Anna – who I’m sure is going to be one of the greatest and most fun dive buddies I’ve ever had!
Just curious – Suunto products do you plan to have on the trip?
Theresa: We’re definitely going to bring the new Suunto Zoop Novo and Suunto D4i. Can’t wait to get to use them! And to capture the trip both in and out of water we’ll be using Olympus TG Tracker action cameras.
How many dives do you expect to do?
Theresa: I hope to do at least 15 dives. I’ve read about fifty or so awesome dive sites around Atmosphere Resorts, and it’s going to be really hard to choose – but I trust that the Atmosphere crew is going to show us their absolute favourites! Besides scuba diving the resort is surrounded by beautiful nature, which we’ll love to explore as well.
Be sure to follow #SuuntoDive on the Instagram and Facebook to enjoy the girls' adventure.