Extreme sport or extreme fun?

For veteran scuba diver, diving is 'whatever you want it to be'

To the uninitiated, scuba diving might seem like an extreme sport. Andy Ogburn doesn't see it that way even though he's been involved in some aspects of sport diving that are considered on the edge, including wreck diving, deep diving, and hard-hat diving.

“With recreational scuba diving, if you plan your dives, have contingency equipment in place, and dive within established limits, it's a pretty safe sport,” he said.

In fact, millions of scuba enthusiasts worldwide embrace the underwater sport as a great multi-generational family activity.

“It's definitely a sport for everybody, and a family sport,” said Ogburn, who noted that it's become more family oriented over the past 15 years. “We have a family of divers now that is getting ready to certify grandchildren.”

Ogburn, who received his bachelor's degree in retail management from USC in 1992, knows diving. He's part of the family that owns and operates the Wateree Dive Center in Columbia, which Larry and Serena Ogburn founded in 1976 and built into a full-service scuba facility offering sales, service, dive travel, and training, including classes held at USC.

“It's something I grew up on so I guess it's a part of me,” said Ogburn, who went on his first dive at age 9 in Lake Wateree near Camden and has been diving ever since. His sister, Lizabeth, is a certified diver, as is his wife, Shane. When his 3-year-old daughter, Caroline, gets old enough, he's hoping she'll take up diving, too.

Ogburn dove on the wreck of the Andrea Doria in the North Atlantic, the USS Monitor ironclad off the coast of North Carolina, the Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon in the Pacific, and a B-25 bomber 150 feet below the surface of Lake Murray near Columbia.

Though family and business obligations don't allow Ogburn to dive as much as he would like to, he's logged thousands of dives throughout the Caribbean, Florida, and in South Carolina.

“The Palmetto State has a surprising number of good inland dive destinations in its lakes and rivers, plus offshore diving offering numerous wrecks and reefs,” he said. “It's also just a few hours by car from Florida and only a short hop to the Caribbean and its world-class diving.

“We're ideally located for it in South Carolina,” Ogburn said, adding, “Diving can be anything you want it to be.”