Claus Rasmussen
Claus’s first diving experiences happened in the mid 1990’s while he was on holiday in Cypress. Even though it had been positive experiences, his work schedule -working with refugees and asylum seekers through Danish Red Cross and running his own Physio and Massage therapy service, kept him away from diving until the change of the Millennia.
Shortly after finishing his PADI Open Water Course and doing a few dives around Denmark and Sweden, he really got hooked on diving while on holiday in Egypt. This was where he saw the variety of fish life that warm water diving offers, and first fell in love with wreck diving.
Claus arrived in Thailand in January of 2002 with the general idea to travel around a bit and maybe complete the PADI Rescue Diver Course. Plans changed and around 6 months later he returned to Denmark as a certified PADI Instructor. By the end of 2003 Claus had reached the level of PADI IDC Staff Instructor. He had also done his first technical realm dive courses -IANTD Advanced Nitrox and the Draeger Dolphin SCR to instructor level. And while working in Malaysia he started to do Deep Air Diving.
Thailand
By early 2004 Claus had pretty much packed up his life in Denmark and was relocating to Thailand. A job as a multi lingual instructor shared between 3 dive centers in Pattaya had already been set up. But inside a couple of months he was on permanent staff with Mermaids Dive Center. The then only PADI CDC in the area was a major Internship training facility. Claus was also part of a small international group of friends that started up a Thailand based company importing and trading dive equipment. They imported apparel like Pinnacle Wetsuits, Draeger Rebreathers, Dive Gear and Amphibious Outfitters shirts etc.
By the middle of 2004 and until 2007 Claus played a major role in the involvement of the internship programs and professional level courses conducted at Mermaids. He taught on nearly 30 PADI IDC’s with numbers between 1 and 28 candidates. The untimely demise of the owner of Mermaids CDC in December 2006 meant Claus had to step up and become the manager of the company.
In 2008, in the search for a bit of a change, Claus left Thailand for Cambodia. What was supposed to be a few months of normal instructor work ended up becoming an almost 18-month job function. The owners of Scuba Nation –the first PADI Dive Centre in Cambodia, took him on as manager of their shop in Sihanoukville.
Phuket
But Thailand was calling so Claus relocated his family to Phuket. After a few years of freelance work and quite a long stint with Scuba Cat Diving, a PADI CDC and later SSI Diamond Instructor Training Facility. Finaly the option of getting back into technical diving came up. In the end of 2016 Claus joined Blue Label Diving, a world-renowned technical training facility. Since then, Claus has primarily been teaching technical diving courses, focusing especially on cave diving.
Thailand Cave Rescue
In 2018 Claus became a key player during the Thai Cave Rescue. He was one of the divers assisting in bringing the 13 kids back out to safety.
Through his diving career Claus has been teaching divers of all levels . He has held Instructor or Instructor Trainer ratings with multiple agencies including DAN, DDI, IANTD, EFR, PADI, PSAI, TDI, RAID and SSI.. He also works with the local Recompression Chamber as a Tender and Operator.
When not working Claus is generally spending time with his wife and two kids.
Claus can be contacted directly by the following means:
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