Ocean First Turns 10!

Ocean First   Jul 01, 2022

A Word From Graham Casden:

To sum up the last 10 years in a few short sentences would be next to impossible. As these photos attest, things were very different in 2007. I was about to jump fins first into a world I knew very little about. At the time, I had never owned a retail business, never managed employees, and had quite literally just started working as a dive professional. Days were, at first, overwhelming-filled with lots of questions, few answers, and a slowly mounting sense of being in over my head- but as things became rooted, the days soon blurred to weeks and then months and now years.

I can say with certainty that I would never had made such a courageous leap of faith had it not been for the amazing Ocean First team. As a new owner, I was fortunate to not only inherit incredible staff, but also an active and loyal community and a venerable reputation within the industry.

As we fast forward through the years, we've grown by a factor of three, made dozens of improvements and retrofits to the facility, switched training agencies, started what is now Boulder's most prestigious swim school, and have been at the vanguard of a mounting environmental movement to improve science education and ocean conservation worldwide.

As wild as the ride has been, it has got us to where we are today and, perhaps even more importantly, is the foundation for where we plan to go tomorrow.

With lots of gratitude

Graham