LIVE TV
Odisha
Recommended Stories
Bhubaneswar: A 10-year-old girl, Tisya Panigrahi has become the youngest scuba diver from Odisha.
Tisya, who presently resides with her parents in Dubai, successfully completed her Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Junior Open Water Scuba Diver’s Course yesterday. PADI is the world’s largest scuba diving training and certification organization.
A student of Raffles World Academy School in Dubai, she jumped off into the Arabian Sea in the Gulf Of Oman, on the east coast of UAE at Fujairah to complete her certification dives and acquire her prized license. In her last training dive she went down to 33 feet and practiced her skills.
Tisya’s certification process involved a 4-day training program which consisted of class room sessions, training in the swimming pool and finally 4 dives in the open sea. To be eligible for this training, she also had to pass a basic endurance test – which involved a 200-meter swim and a 10-min floating session.
Born to Priyadarshee Panigrahi from Sambalpur and Soumitri Nanda from Cuttack, Tisya happens to be the granddaughter of late Sriballav Panigrahi, who was a cabinet minister and 3-time MP.
Tisya’s interest in scuba diving was kindled by the experiences of her father Priyadarshee, who is himself a certified PADI Open Water Diver. Hearing about the beautiful life under the sea from her father, she got exposed to her father’s underwater videos and pictures at a very early age and immediately took a liking for them.
“I was waiting with earnest to learn diving and had to enroll for the Junior Open Water Diver’s course. In fact, I wanted to do the course on the day of my 10th Birthday but I could not because of the coronavirus pandemic. Acquiring the Junior Open Water Diver’s licence is a dream come true for me,” said Tisya.
"It is my father who kindled my interest in diving. I always wanted to join him in his underwater exploits," she said.
(Edited By Suryakant Jena)
Read More: Odia girl Swarnalata all set to conquer Mount Everest
