Lately, Junior Louis Penrod  has been swimming with the fishes– literally. Penrod is a recreational scuba diver and was introduced to diving through a Discover Scuba program made available through Boy Scouts. 

“I like being underwater. There is a lot more to see.” said Penrod.

Even though Harrisonburg is not very close to the ocean, it does accommodate several large quarries nearby.

“[My family and I] go to the Petersburg quarry, and different lakes in West Virginia,” Penrod said. “We also plan weekends for when we go to Lake Rawlings [in Southern Virginia].” Bigger trips to the ocean are made during the summer or during Spring Break.

“My favorite place to dive is the Florida Keys,” Penrod said. “Once, my dad and I were swimming [in the Keys], and when we were coming up to the boat, we saw a green Moray eel swimming around that was about 6 feet long. It was really cool, because it was just out in the open when they usually stay down deeper in their caves.”

Although Penrod has been diving for two years, he has not experienced any particularly traumatizing calamities.

“There was this one time when I had a BCD [Buoyancy Control Device] malfunction, where my valve wasn’t completely closed and water was coming in,” Penrod said. “It wasn’t anything too serious. I just had to constantly keep swimming around.”

Not anybody can scuba dive. Diving requires a license. In order to obtain his license, Penrod first had to take a three-day information course in which he had to read “a really big book” and then take a test on the information that he learned. Once the pencil and paper stuff was out of the way, Penrod went on to spend two half-days in a pool and then took part in 4 open water dives in either a lake or an ocean to earn his license. There are also specialties and additional certifications that can be acquired by taking extra courses. Penrod has a long list of certifications that range from Advanced Open Diver and Rescue Diver to Underwater Archaeologist diver and Digital Underwater Photography Diver

“My specialties include underwater photography, underwater archaeology… and a bunch more,” Penrod said.