Kasper | SSI Master Instructor

Hi, I’m Kasper.

Since 2019, I have been affiliated with Porto Mari Sports—first as an instructor and, since 2020, as manager and owner. After fifteen years in academia, where I focused on sociolinguistics and research in West Africa, I traded the Benelux for the Caribbean and made diving my profession. In a way, I still work in a sociolinguistically surprisingly rich context: switching daily between guests from all corners of the world and a multilingual team, where language plays an important role in instruction, safety, marketing, and translation. If I were still working in academia, I would love to do fieldwork in a place like this—or read a book about it, or write one.

I have been diving since 2006, or actually only seriously since 2013, and have had the privilege of diving in various places around the world: from the cold kelp forests near Cape Town to tropical reefs in Egypt, historic wrecks at St. Eustatius, and the impressive cenotes of Yucatan (Mexico). But the more I travel, the more I have come to appreciate the underwater world of Curaçao. As far as I’m concerned, there is no better place in the world to learn to dive than Porto Mari.

I am an SSI Master Instructor and also hold professional certifications and/or dive qualifications with PADI, DAN, IDD, and IANTD. I still greatly enjoy guiding beginner divers, but I also like teaching theory to (future) divemasters and assistant instructors. In addition, I provide sidemount, decompression, and independent diver courses, among others. I can teach diving in Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, and—with a bit of extra effort—also Portuguese.

Together with my wife Caroline, I run Annidas Sambuyá Studios and Apartments in Julianadorp. We have two teenage children, both of whom also dive. If I’m not underwater, I’m usually busy with a DIY project in or around the house, following the chess world with pleasure, and I still enjoy writing, for example for this website.