Bottom Dwellers is a social club for LGBTQA+ scuba divers located in and around Seattle, WA. Our membership is primarily folks in the LGBTQA+ community, but we’re not narrow in our interpretation. If you want to dive with us, we’d love to have you along!
What do we do?
We regularly organize local shore dives and charters in the Pacific Northwest, trips to tropical locations like the Caribbean, Mexico, the South Pacific, and Hawaii, and we host social events and club meetings.
Some of our recent local dives have been at Edmonds Underwater Park, Redondo Beach, Rosario Beach, and Mukilteo T-Dock. We also wander out to Hoodsport now and then. For example…
Our most recent weekend trip
We went to the Hood Canal for a weekend in August 2021 to dive Sund Rock, Octo Hole, and Triton Cove. We had 13 people there and saw so many giant octos! To see more pictures from our adventures and hear about next year’s trip back out there, join our private Facebook Group.
Membership
Join the club and gain access to our private FaceBook group for information on upcoming events. We’re going to be honest here; 2020 hit us hard (as it did many social clubs) and our membership dropped significantly. We’re working to bring our membership back to pre-pandemic numbers (upwards of 200), and we’d love for you to be part of that. Membership is $40 a year, which gets you:
- 10% discount on courses, retail items, and parts services at Underwater Sports Seattle
- 10% Discount on courses, retail items, and parts services at YSS Dive in Hoodsport
- Guest speakers
- Multi-media presentations and videos of local and warm water dive trips
- Holiday parties, potlucks & picnics, etc.
Diving with us
We welcome divers of all experience levels starting at Open Water certified. Participation in our dives is dependent on proper qualifications; you must be certified by NAUI, PADI, SSI, or a similar professional training program in order to dive with us. We strongly recommend DAN or other scuba-specific insurance, as well.
While we’re not teachers, we love to welcome newcomers into the sport, so even if you’re fresh out of your Open Water class, we’ll be happy to go out and putt around Edmonds with you to help you get some dives under your (weight) belt. Heh.
Website fundraiser
Do you like our spiffy new website? We like it, and we’d like to add more to it! With our website, we’re striving to build community with queer divers here in the PNW and around the world. Our hope is to add a calendar of events, a member forum for photos and reports from club dives, links to other queer diving clubs, queer-friendly dive instructors, queer-friendly dive company links, and a few other tidbits. Our fundraising goal is $2,500 and we’ll continue building as funds come in. If you would like to donate, contact our leadership team via the link below.
A brief note
Bottom Dwellers is a safe place for anyone (in or out of the closet) to gather and be accepted for who they are. It’s a place where divers can socialize and share diving experiences, meet others to dive and travel with, and socialize without judgement. We treat each other with respect and dignity and do not discriminate on the basis of, well, anything.
In joining bottom dwellers, members agree to:
- Respect others’ out status. This is the reason our Facebook Group is private.
- Focus our interactions on supporting each other in our growth as scuba divers.