By Kevin Sears
The optional scuba program was a semester-long scuba diving certifying program at Fountain Valley High School (FVHS). On hiatus since 2023, it first began in 2009 and was administered through the Advanced Placement Environmental Science (APES) course until 2020, when Lisa Battig, the teacher for the optional scuba program, switched from teaching APES to Marine Biology.
While under APES, the scuba program was considered an extracurricular course held outside of school time in the FVHS pool. The program worked alongside Ocean Gear Scuba Inc., a third-party program that trained and granted scuba certification to the students. The instructor for Ocean Gear Scuba Inc. was John Sims who taught the course with Battig.
The program only had 18 spots available, but it would accept any students as long as they could meet the prerequisites of being a competent swimmer. This includes being able to swim, completing a continual 200-yard swim and treading above the water for a minimal amount of time. Students with certain health issues such as severe asthma or motion sickness could not participate given the risk associated with diving.
Throughout the program, students were expected to complete research projects, become scuba certified and partake in the program’s class scuba diving trips in Santa Catalina Island or Corona del Mar.
Research projects were a major part of the optional scuba curriculum under APES. An entire spring was dedicated to a single research project for students to complete while diving.
“All scuba [students] would design and carry out one research project. [For example,] it may be [about] a comparison of different fishes and where they lived, [about] something a student found on a giant kelp or [about] lightning and [its] effects on algae,” Battig said. “There were so many things that [students] did.”
Projects were mostly designed by students on their own with parameters and assistance from Battig.
As part of their projects, the students went on diving trips that began with the school’s pool to a three-day to three-night trip on a dive boat in Santa Catalina. After COVID-19, the Santa Catalina trip began to include trips to Corona del Mar for beach dives.
The optional scuba program ran under APES until 2020 when Battig began teaching Marine Biology. A similar program continued under Marine Biology until 2023 when the program failed to continue.
Battig declined to comment on why the program was placed on hiatus.
Similar scuba programs used to be common in Huntington Beach Union High School District with Edison High School, Huntington Beach High School and FVHS P.E. hosting similar programs.
The optional scuba program costs roughly $1,200 for students for the first year. About $600-$700 of the cost was for the scuba supplies, the scuba instructor and the rentals, and there was an additional $500 for the boat trip, food and housing.
Battig has plans to re-continue the optional scuba program next year; however, there are some challenges in her way.
“As long as I run it separately from the classroom, as a separate entity not under the school, [where] the school [or the] district doesn’t hold insurance for it, I can do it,” Battig said.
In the past, Battig did not get paid for hosting the optional scuba program.
“Because I was scuba certified in high school, and [I] felt like it was a valuable opportunity. [My experience] was a big motivator for [me to run the program],” Battig said. “[However, the scuba program] is all in complete flux. I have no time or energy to be able to sit down and try and figure it out. So I don’t know. It depends. I want to, but I don’t know.”
