Alison Forbis

Alison grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and was a year-round swim team kid from the time she knew this was possible. She spent every summer day from age 2 to 18 either on the coast at Ocean City, Md, or at Cedarbrook Swim Club in Kensington, Md., for swim team practice, dive lessons, lifeguarding, teaching swimming lessons, and yes, performing in synchronized swimming shows! This is not made up — there are pictures! When it came time to go off to college, she eagerly chose East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., for its marine-related majors and excellent swim team, NOT because of its party school reputation. Seriously! However, when she got there she found that all the cute guys were in the business school and that the coach actually expected you to show up for swim practice at 5 a.m. every day regardless of your busy social schedule. Anyway, her love of the water continued and grew even if her plans changed a bit, and she began her diving career during vacations to the Caribbean sometime in the mid-‘80s (she was just a baby at the time). She was certified as a PADI Divemaster in 1994 and then Instructor in 1997 and worked nights and weekends as an instructor for Blue Dolphin Dive Center/Blue Stone Resort in Winston-Salem, N.C., for the next 10 years until she and her husband relocated to Florida. Alison has been involved in the training of more than 500 divers from open-water to instructor to technical. She is an active cave and wreck diver with more than 3,000 dives, and she's also an experienced —if somewhat clumsy — underwater photographer. She recently left her "day job" as Regional Vice President for a national staffing company to make diving a full time pursuit. She and her husband, Brent, run Wet Dreams Scuba, Inc., a dive training and travel business located on the Gulf Coast in the Tampa Bay area.

Favorites:
For Big Animals: The N.C. Coast, Cocos Island and the Galapagos Islands
For Wrecks: The Florida Atlantic Coast and the Florida Keys, the N.C. coast, Truk Lagoon and Bikini Atoll
For Caves: North Florida Springs and the cenotes of the Riviera Maya, Mexico.
For Underwater Beauty: Fiji. (“ It’s the only place I could happily stay put and not feel the urge to wander the world!”)

Other interests/hobbies include: Boating in the Gulf of Mexico, travel (anywhere that has water), riding bikes, playing with her two "puppies" Rusty and Molly, reading, good music (mostly rock from the ‘70s to the present, with a few other odds and ends mixed in). She is currently making an enthusiastic if somewhat sporadic attempt to relearn the piano. She is also very interested in learning to dive the "new" closed-circuit rebreathers sometime in the near future.