Red Fish Underwater LLC is the name of our Dive Shop. SSI does not allow its professionals to freelance but because our Boat is an official SSI Dive Boat, we can be mobile and provide our services wherever we are located.

We are Edward "Lee" & Brownie Hutchins. We have been diving since 2005. In 2005, we were vacationing in Cancun, MX and the resort we were staying with offered us a "Resort Course" (PADI Discover Scuba Diving) and surfaced with smiles and desire for more. We arranged to take an Open Water Diver course while we were there and found ourselves certified.

We were USAF Air Force officers and much of our training emphasized the need to do more training and develop muscle memory and familiarity with our gear. We also understood that new pilots were the most dangerous. We were determined not to kill ourselves so we arranged to take the next level of PADI training - Advanced Open Water Diver. We went back to Playacar, MX and did our navigation, deep, buoyancy and for fun we dove in the Cenotes. We had a great time, but we had rented gear again and it was a completely different configuration.

When we got back home, we made the decision to seek out our local dive shop (Virginia Scuba in Manassas, VA) and decided that we would talk to a US based training center and see what we had missed in the Resort areas. We bought complete sets of gear and signed up for PADI Rescue Diver which we did in the local quarry. We started traveling and Lee took his photography passion underwater.

We also decided that after a couple of years, we could use our training to help pay for our habit and Lee became a PADI Divemaster. He served in that role for several years and when SSI came to VA Scuba to propose converting from PADI to SSI we all jumped at the opportunity as PADI (Put Another Dollar In) was getting expensive and SSI was offering a less expensive but much better product. Under SSI we as a dive shop and dive professionals we were part of the SSI team, not another profit center that PADI was treating us as.

At the time of conversion, Lee was the only Divemaster on VA Scuba's staff. The other primary staff members were all instructors. A PADI Divemaster was the equivalent of an SSI Assistant Instructor. Lee continued to serve as the only training support staff for another year or so and then upgraded to full Instructor.

He worked as an Instructor until he and Brownie retired from their professional lives and at that point we decided to buy a sailboat and launch our own Dive Shop. Since then we have trained Openwater Students in 4 languages, minted our first Master Diver and helped 2 dive shops on St Thomas for 2 seasons where Lee introduced over 200 people to diving through SSI's Basic Diver program, acted as a dive guide for over a 100 dives and certified a bunch more specialties. He also worked as a Dive Boat captain having attained his USCG OUPV Captain's License.

Brownie serves as our business manager helping manage the business and family sides of being a fulltime traveling training center.

Since getting certified, we have traveled to dive in the Philippines, Belize, The Dutch East Indies, Bahamas, VA, FL, Maldives, and MX as well as ST Thomas, Curaçao, and Grenada.

After close consultation with the SSI Caribbean Business Representative, Lee agreed to upgrade to Instructor Trainer so that we can use our unique position as an SSI Dive Boat to house us and allow us to travel to different Caribbean Islands and provide the best SSI Instructor Training available to new Open Water Instructors and help cross over PADI (and other) Dive Shops and their staff into the SSI Family. Lee has the unique perspective of having worked in the Caribbean Scuba Resort industry and understands the significant differences between that environment and the US CONUS dive industry.

Our main website contains details about our boat.

About Red Fish Underwater