WORCESTER—One might not think of Worcester as a scuba diving destination, but for John Dwinell, that doesn’t matter at all. Dwinell and his wife, Deb, are the owners of Central Mass Scuba on Shrewsbury Street, a one-stop shop for dive enthusiasts. The shop offers classes in snorkeling, scuba, and instructional courses, where one can learn to teach scuba oneself, as well as sales, service, and rentals of equipment.
“Diving has been a fun hobby,” Dwinell said, “and now that I’ve taken over [the business], I’ve found out it’s a lot of fun and a lot of work.”
Though Worcester is landlocked, there is no lack of lakes, and Dwinell said he grew up appreciating nature.
“I grew up in Millbury,” he said. “My dad was a true outdoorsman, and I had a brother in the Coast Guard and another brother who did water search and rescue for the Millbury Police Department. They always included me. I was the hanger-on, and I was pulled along with them. I was very lucky.”
In the 1990s, Dwinell worked for the shop’s previous owner, Joe Cicero, when the store was on Lake Avenue. When the shop closed, a group of employees came to him and asked him to be part of their plan to reopen.
“That’s what we did, in 1995,” Dwinell said. “There were seven of us then, and one by one, they all moved on.”
His last partner, George Gilligan, has retired, so the Dwinells are now the sole owners of the shop. Dwinell is also a lifeguard and swim instructor at the YWCA, while his wife is a nurse in the Worcester Public Schools.
“Diving is great for all walks of life,” he said. “For some, scuba is not for them, but they like snorkeling. There’s something here for everyone.”
To begin, Dwinell said, participants are asked to fill out a medical questionnaire. “There are some things what will exclude you, but it’s extremely safe,” he said. “We have a saying, ‘Plan your dive, then dive your plan.’”
Scuba classes happen at the YWCA in Worcester, and, when ready, new divers do a check-out in a natural body of water, including Wallum Lake in East Douglas, Rockport, Gloucester or Jamestown, RI. For certifications, the shop uses Scuba Schools International (SSI) and International Divers Education Association (IDEA), which are both recognized around the world.
“We also offer a referral package, Dwinell said. “You can do the classes, or taken them on line if that’s more convenient, and then finish up in a place with warmer water.”
Dwinell has encouraged the sport with youngsters as well. “We’ve worked with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, and helped Boy Scouts with the scuba merit badge,” he said.
Along with diving instruction, Central Mass Scuba offers a finding service: If someone loses something in a body of water, they request someone to try to find it.
“We’ve recovered glasses, drones, cell phones,” Dwinell said. “The most unusual request was someone who lost their dentures in the Hopkinton reservoir.”
And sometimes, he said, he recovers more than he was looking for.
“Once we got a call about a lost cell phone right off of a dock,” he said. “We found that one, along with another five phones.”
Dwinell said he has had two favorite dive experiences. “The first was with my wife at Dominca in the south Caribbean,” he said. “We went down 90 feet and there were all different sorts of marine life — fish, eels, and sea horses.”
The second was Cenote Dos Ojos, an underwater cave system in the Yucatan Peninsula.
“It was like Indiana Jones meets National Geographic,” he said. “It’s full of stalactites and stalagmites, and the jungle is above you.”
Dwinell said the diving community is “very open,” with everyone on equal footing.
“You could be at a conference, in an elevator with a National Geographic photographer, and they talk to you just like we’re talking now,” he said.
That camaraderie is even more pronounced at the local level. Dwinell recalled a conversation he had with Ero Sunderstrom, the proprietor of Island Divers in Leicester.
“I went in there one day, and he said ‘You’re the guy in Worcester’ and we spent three hours together,” Dwinell recalled. “He treated me like a son. He was the dean of dive shops; he schooled me in the business and in working with sales reps. He said, ‘You’re not my competition. Our competition is anything that takes people away from diving.’ That was in ’98 or ’99 and I’ve never forgotten what he taught me that afternoon.”
Central Mass Scuba is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from 3 to 7 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Central Mass Scuba is also a Toys for Tots location; new and unwrapped toys can be dropped off through Dec. 9.
Christine M. Quirk is a novelist and educator who lives in West Boylston with her family. She can be reached at cmqwriter@gmail.com
