Come learn a little about us!

Our roots go back to 1976 when a group of SCUBA instructors created a program to teach high school students how to dive.  Over the next decade the program would grow and develop, struggle and succeed and produce a solid educational model.  In 1987, the current director of our program, John Sims started our movement down it's present path.  His goal was to create an imaginative series of instructional programs that blended SCUBA training with other activities.

First came our Physical Education Program in several High Schools throughout Southern California.  If you attend, work in, or just think it would be great to have a program like this in your local school, then contact us and we'll see what we can do to set it up.  Currently, Ocean Gear operates the largest high school SCUBA program in the country.  In our 34 year history we have introduced over 200.000 students how to SCUBA Diving.

Later in 1992, John and his wife Debbie decided it was time to expand the program (actually the parents of our students "kinda forced the issue").  That expansion included a full-service dive center.  In the last 18 years (July marks our shop's 18 year anniversary and John & Debbie's 20th year of marriage) we have developed into Huntington Beach's largest dive center.  Our basic focus has been to provide a common sense approach to servicing the SCUBA community.  We keep our pricing fair and reasonable.  We try to go the extra mile for our clients on customer service.  If we don't have an answer, we'll get one.  We are a little old fashioned, but that seems to work for us.  We keep up on all the modern equipment and service almost all of it.

Two years later, 1994, John acquired his Course Director Rating.  This allows a SCUBA instructor to teach people to train and certify individuals as SCUBA Instructors and train people to become Instructor Trainers (the trainers of SCUBA Instructors - certification is only issued by Course Directors).  This allowed for the development of our Leadership Training Department.  Currently, Ocean Gear is one of the most active Instructor Training facilities in the Western United States.  Upon graduation, our Instructors are qualified to teach all levels of SCUBA through Dive Master, Nitrox Courses and First Aid/CPR courses.

In 2006, with the help of Ken Ostrowski, a local high school teacher and college professor, we created our Environmental Science Field Studies program.  This program was designed in keeping with our original goal - use SCUBA to blend and supplement other activities.  We take what students learn in the classroom and move them into the field to apply that knowledge and do something with it.  That program now includes 3 Day SCUBA Live Aboard trips using Catalina Island as a giant laboratory and a dive boat as a base of operations.  We have developed and entire supplemental cirriculum to work with the following courses:  A.P. Environmental Science, Oceanography, Biology, and Chemistry.  We have similar courses being developed for Art, Social Sciences and Statistics.  It is an amazing blend of schools, business, and community coming together to produce an amazing experience.

In late 2007, we added a membrane Nitrox pumping system to our program.  With the introduction of Nitrox and the use of a membrane system, we can now offer Nitrox programs at reasonable costs to the entire diving community.  Everyone should consider the use of Nitrox.  Whether it is used to reduce risk from Nitrogen Narcosis or Decompression Sickness, extend our bottom time on our SCUBA Dives, decrease our surface interval so we can do more dives in a day or simply reduce fatigue from the diving we're doing, every single diver can benefit from Nitrox training.  You should investigate and think about adding it to your training.

December 1, 2010, we moved into our new facility.  With over 800 square feet of showroom, a state of the art classroom, an exclusive drive-up station for express air fills, a convenient "after hours" night drop for rental returns and equipment services, and newly expanded hours to include a 7 day a week schedule we plan to continue to deliver that same high quality of service mixed with our well-known "mom & pop" approach.

Currently, Ocean Gear SCUBA Center is recognized as one of the top 5 NAUI facilities in the Western United States.  Our small little store does a lot.  With over 200,000 students exposed to SCUBA Diving, we continue to both proud and humbled by the fact that we have never had a SCUBA accident.   The important thing we try never to forget is that we can't do any of it without you, so - THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT!!