ABOUT US Meet the St. CROIX SCUBA Team

St. Croix Ultimate Bluewater Adventures (SCUBA) opened on July 15, 1998.  Longtime island residents Ed (30 years) and Molly (25 years) met while working for the same airline, a Caribbean subsidiary of Eastern Airlines.  After the demise of Eastern, Molly and Ed didn't want to leave the island that they loved so much.  Ed was a NAUI Instructor (Molly was his first student) and Molly had retail background from college so they started working for what was then the oldest dive shop on the island, V.I. Divers, Ltd.

Anyone who has ever owned their own business knows that if you're going to work that hard in a business it should be your own business.

It took several Margaritas at Luncheria to come up with the words that would make the acronym SCUBA.  Same thing with the logo.

SCUBA started out with a small retail dive shop in Christiansted on St. Croix and no boat or dive equipment.  Within the first six months V.I. Divers, Ltd., sold the diving equipment, compressor and rental gear to Molly and Ed.

The next step was the boats.

Reliance came to St. Croix brand new in 1987 when Larry French who owned Underwater St. Croix in Green Cay Marina bought the boat.  Ed actually became a customer of Larry's and received his Advanced and Rescue certifications on the boat.  In 1989 Hurricane Hugo hit and really decimated the island. Larry realized that there was a lot more money to make as a contractor (something he had plenty of experience in doing) than in a dive shop.  The boat sat idle for 6 years until 1995 when it was purchased by Bob Bose who opened Green Cay Divers.

As a result of yet another hurricane (Hurricane Marilyn) V.I. Divers found themselves without a boat, and Bob was without a Captain.  The two shops combined forces and Ed Captained Reliance for both shops.

Then in November of 1998 SCUBA purchased Reliance and was finally a full-service dive shop.

Three years later SCUBA blew out a wall in the shop and doubled in space.  Three years after than they blew out another wall and added the "ScuBoutique" portion of the store. Ed jokes that Molly is just working her way towards a waterfront store.

This past January (2016) ScuBoutique changed to Molly's.  So we now have Molly's at Scuba (Christiansted) and Molly's by Polly's (Frederiksted).

Now, having added a second boat, Scuba Dos, SCUBA is the only dive shop that dives all of the moored dive sites around St. Croix's north and west coasts.

I started diving out of a work trip in Hawaii where I got tired of free diving down to see the really cool blue ribbon eels back in 1998.  When I got back to Texas and asked my hubby to help find me a dive shop since he had been diving for 5 years before me.  We found the coolest shop in Carrollton where I started my journey.  I found out quickly that my love for teaching which I had done for 17 plus years in the corporate world extended into diving, so off I drug the hubby (not kicking and screaming but….) and we became dive instructors.  

In 2001 we purchased that very shop and had a blast traveling around the world and educating people in the beauty of the aquatic realm. I soon became an Instructor Trainer (PADI Course Director) and the journey continued.  

We started coming to St. Croix in 2012 and decided that when the time was right, we would sell the shop and move down.  That started in 2016 where we continued to train family and friends. Official move happened in fall of 2018 after the sale of the shop.  

I took a year off of full time dive training to have loads of fun cooking at Leatherback brewery but my heart was missing something.  I saw Ed & Molly at DEMA (our annual dive show) and asked if I could do more than just the professional side of training!  Boom – I am now a happy camper again sharing my love for diving with novices and professionals alike.

Hi, my name is Nitrox (I'm a mix) and I was rescued by Ed and Molly a couple of years ago.  I used to hang around the shop all the time but now I just stay home with my buddies Kenny and Dodger (also rescues).