Manta Divers Team

Carl Yates (Joint Owner and Director)

PADI Course Director

TDI Technical Instructor

EFR & EFR First Aid at Work Instructor / Instructor Trainer

DAN Instructor Trainer

Having spent many hours watching Jacques Cousteau on television as a child, I finally learned to dive on holiday in Spain many years ago. I joined a BSAC club back in the UK and became qualified to Advanced Instructor and First Class Diver. I then crossed over to PADI and became a PADI Instructor in 1994. In 2005, I qualified as a PADI Course Director, the highest PADI Instructor rating, since then I have run many IDCs and Specialty Instructor courses with a 100% success rate. I am also qualified as a TDI Advanced Nitrox, Decompression Procedures and Trimix Instructor.

Having done at least 10,000 dives in many different countries around the world and worked as a professional Instructor for more than 20 years, I'm still in love with all types of diving; warm and cold water, wrecks and reefs, shallow or deep.

My favourite dive? Could be the hour and a half with a whaleshark in Kenya or maybe the pod of dolphins on the Thistlegorm in Egypt. There are so many to choose from…..and then there's the Maldives still to come later this year!

Kaye Bunyan (Joint Owner and Director)

PADI IDC Staff Instructor

EFR & EFR First Aid at Work Instructor

PADI Specialty Instructor

I learned to dive in the UK in 2002, including completing the open water dives. The following week, I went to the Red Sea in Egypt and, from then on, I was addicted to scuba diving! I became a PADI Divemaster in 2006 and then worked my way through the Instructor ratings to PADI IDC Staff Instructor. I am currently working towards the PADI Master Instructor rating.

I've been lucky enough to dive all over the world and have seen many amazing things on my dives. I've dived in Egypt, Indonesia, Australia, Belize, Kenya, Turks & Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Hawaii, Florida, Tenerife, Malta and the UK, but my favourite and the one I keep going back to is the Maldives.

My favourite dive? There are too many to be able to choose just one! Seeing whalesharks in the Maldives and Kenya, being surrounded by manta rays in the Maldives, 17 hammerhead sharks off the back off Jackson Reef in the Straits of Tiran, the pod of dolphins in Kenya, the seahorses in Indonesia, hanging over the edge of Bloody Bay Wall in Little Cayman with nothing but thousands of metres of waters below me.....

Tim Filtness

PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI)

EFR Instructor

PADI Specialty Instructor

I've been diving for over eight years now. I am also TDI qualified and enjoy the extended bottom time that the qualification allows me on my dives. I dive frequently in the UK and really enjoy exploring the numerous wrecks that exist in our coastal waters. I am also particularly interested in aquatic ecology and have recently participated in a reef conservation project in Sodwana, South Africa.

Susannah Perks

PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI)

EFR Instructor

John Pugsley

PADI Divemaster

I learned to dive in 2006. I wanted a new challenge where I could meet people who had the same interest. I very quickly found my feet with diving and progressed through to the Divemaster certification with careful guidance from Carl Yates. I chose to stop at the Divemaster qualification, as it was a position I was comfortable with. Since progressing to Divemaster, I have also qualified as a TDI technical diver with Carl.

I still get the same kick out of diving now as I did when I took my first breath underwater in 2006 and I always look forward to my next dive. See you in the water!

Bernie Leger

Jeff Bradshaw

Svetlana Mirova

Trainee Divemasters

Manta Divers

"Welcome to the Underwater World"