COMMENT | I want to talk about the night that overwhelmed me with so much anger when I was at Perhentian Island recently.

Earlier this year, I became certified as an adaptive support diver. I decided to take up this diving speciality for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to use my diving skills to give back to the community. Secondly, there aren’t many adaptive divers around and less than a quarter of those certified are women.

The reason for this is unfortunate, but understandable. Unlike other diving specialities, such as photography or wreck diving, where people who dive a few times of year would be able to incorporate the hobby into their holidays, adaptive diving comes with heavy responsibilities, which make the enjoy-ability of the dive a secondary experience.

Adaptive divers are trained to support and assist people who are differently-abled to discover and build self-esteem and confidence through scuba diving. The course anchors itself to four main beneficiary areas: amputees, paraplegics, quadriplegics and the visually impaired...