I've Been on Your Side of the Table
Before I ran a dive shop, I was a police officer and an active member of a public safety dive team. I know what it's like to need gear, training, and support — and to have almost nowhere to turn that actually understood the job.
My first exposure to surface-supplied diving wasn't in a classroom — it was on a multi-agency search operation with the FBI, in cold water, looking for a missing child. That's the kind of stakes this equipment exists for, and it's shaped how seriously I take every team I work with since.
Every dive shop I dealt with as part of a team ran into the same two walls.
The first wall: recreational solutions applied to PSD problems. Dive shops know recreational diving — that's their world, and their expertise is real. But recreational gear, recreational training pathways, and recreational thinking don't translate cleanly to zero-visibility water, entanglement hazards, contaminated water, or the operational demands of a dive rescue team. It wasn't malicious. It just wasn't the right fit, and teams paid the price for it in gear that didn't hold up and training that didn't prepare them for the job.
The second wall: retail sales culture meeting government budgets. Team needs got squeezed into normal retail sales processes that never accounted for government purchasing cycles, budget approvals, or grant timelines. Worse, some vendors saw a dive team as a big checkbook — an opportunity, not a partnership — without understanding what the team actually needed or how it needed to spend.
I started Sink or Swim Scuba to close both of those gaps.
A Partner, Not a Vendor
I don't want to be "just another vendor" to your team. I want to actively partner with you — the way I wished someone had partnered with the teams I served on.
That means:
- Helping you figure out what you actually need, not what's easiest to sell
- Working within your real budget and your real budget cycle — city, county, or grant-funded — instead of pushing a one-size-fits-all package
- Presenting to your department or board when you need help justifying a purchase, and attending meetings with you if it helps make the case
- Structuring gear and training plans in phases, so you can build toward the right setup over time instead of being stuck choosing between "everything now" and "nothing"
In practice, this usually means teams end up with more capable, better-fitted gear for their budget than they would have gotten shopping it out cold — because the plan is built around the team's mission and money from day one, not around a sales quota.
"Sink or Swim Scuba won our open bid for diver communication equipment, and at first I was nervous since they were so far away. However, Brent has been amazing to work with, helping me remotely probably faster than I could get help locally. Through video calls, links, and messages, Brent was able to help me as a very green Dive Team Leader set up our OTS Guardian FFM and MK3 comms system.
I would not consider Brent just a vendor. He is part of our Dive Team. Always eager to answer questions, give us support, and willing to drive to Kansas of all places to do demos.
Distance does not have anything to do with his ability to support our team." — Britton Winter, Dive Team Leader, Osage County Dive Team
Whatever Level Your Team Operates At
I work across the full range of public safety diving equipment and training, including:
- OTS Guardian full face masks and Powercom communications
- Hollis scuba systems
- Interspiro DP1 surface-supplied systems and wired communications
- Standard recreational scuba gear, for teams building or filling out a roster
Read more about the platforms we support most: our Interspiro Divator Full Face Mask review breaks down why it's become a trusted PSD standard, and our Interspiro & OTS training/equipping/service overview covers how we bundle both brands into one relationship instead of three separate vendors. You can also browse the Interspiro DP-1 Surface Supply System and OTS Guardian Full Face Mask directly on our site.
And I support the whole lifecycle of a program:
- Team formation — helping departments stand up a dive program from scratch
- Diver training — from open water certification through public safety diver progression
- Equipment selection — matching gear to your team's actual operating conditions and budget
- Ongoing service and documentation — keeping your equipment maintained and your records audit-ready
Whether you're a new team trying to figure out where to start, or an established team looking to modernize, upgrade, or just get equipment maintenance under control, I'm here to help you work through it.
See what a long-term partnership actually looks like in practice in our Lincoln County Sheriff Dive Team case study — nearly 30 years of service, training, and equipment support for one department.
