Graham Abbott, Director and Dive Guide
Graham is the founder and director of Diving 4 Images. He is Diving 4 Images main guide & expedition director who likes to run pretty much every trip we organise.
Graham on left having after dive giggles with Stan Waterman
Graham will be personally showing you the best dives in Indonesia, sharing his experience, knowledge and passion for the underwater world when you join a Diving 4 Images trip.
The passion for exploration has led to the naming of numerous dive sites around Indonesia and lots of the great dive sites in places like the very famous Raja Ampat and also the lesser known Triton Bay where Graham was one of the first dive guides to lead expeditions. Grahams passion for marine life has led to the discovery of numerous unknown species, including a new species of shark, an eel, a new species of mantis shrimp, numerous opisthobranchs, and even a deep water fish and sea star previously unknown to Indonesian waters.
Since founding Diving 4 Images, Graham has worked with many of the best photographers and film-makers in the business, becoming the dive guide of choice for many well known professionals. To name a few would be to list the late great BBC coral reef film maker Peter Scoones, National Geographic’s David Doubilet, the great IMAX film making team Howard & Michelle Hall and marine life experts Dr. Gerry Allen & Dr. Mark Erdmann, along with numerous others. To read what these have said about Graham check out the testimonials page.
Its not just about the professionals though, Graham enjoys nothing more than leading groups of enthusiastic non-professionals who share his passion. Indeed Graham is equally at home taking a BBC camera crew to remote locations to film sea-snake behavior as he is leading a group of enthusiastic nudibranch nuts as they search for rare specimens for no other reason than their own pleasure.
The earlier days…
Graham was attracted to water ever since he was a young boy growing up in England. His first encounters with marine life were in the tide pools where he collected specimens in buckets for closer examination. Even from a very early age Graham enjoyed finding strange and unusual animals and trying to figure out what they were. It was when Graham was a young kid that he found his first scorpion fish and wondered ‘what on earth is this?’.
For a young Graham the thought of becoming a certified diver and diving on a regular basis was not even a dream; diving was something only the very privileged could do. It wasn’t until Graham moved to the tiny island of Jersey, where he met a few local divers, that he had an opportunity to give scuba diving a try. Needless to say, that first underwater experience was enough to convince Graham that he needed to get certified and go in search of more diving.
Graham was first certified in Florida and it was here that he first heard other divers tales of diving in exotic South East Asia, surly the best diving in the World. Graham made up his mind, he knew where he was heading.
When Graham made his first dive on Sipadan Island he was totally overwhelmed with the abundance and diversity of Indo-Pacific marine life. After seeing so many sharks, barracudas, jacks, turtles and other big animals Graham started to get interested in looking for unusual creatures. He quickly found that this was the most exciting thing to do underwater and he enjoyed showing the unusual finds to other divers; especially photographers who could capture the image forever. It was whilst guiding divers on The Drop Off at Sipadan that his big dream started to take shape; he wanted to guide the World’s best photographers, film-makers and the keenest marine life enthusiasts. Being able to work with such divers would mean Graham would be able to constantly learn more and more about this amazing underwater environment he had discovered.
It was 1997 when Graham left engineering to start his quest. Graham worked as a professional dive guide in such varied locations as North Sulawesi, West Australia, the Wakatobi island group, Komodo, West Papua, Flores, Alor and the Banda Sea. He finally settled in Bali and, in 2002, founded Diving 4 Images. Starting the company only served to increase Graham’s dive travels as he led groups throughout Eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. His lust for discovery hasn’t wained and Graham was the organizer and trip leader for the first ever pioneering dives to Triton Bay, West Papua, and one of the first operators to lead regular expeditions with recreational divers to Halmahera and Northern Seram.
Diving 4 Images is Graham’s big dream come to fruition.
