The water's no limit for blind scuba diving woman

Asha Duncan might have been born blind, but this doesn't stop her from rising to new challenges and immersing in the fascinating world of scuba diving.

The 26-year-old woman from New Hope, Minnesota in the U.S has decided to embark on a journey of self-discovery and adventure as she began taking scuba diving lessons with an instructor.

While for most ordinary people, scuba diving itself might represent an extraordinary feat that may scare some about the limited ability to breathe and the unfamiliar deep water environment, for Asha the experience is twice as challenging as she is not able to see while scuba diving.

But that hasn't hindered here from going after her life dream of becoming a PADI certified diver and on her quest to fulfill her scuba diving ambition, and after knowing that she wanted to give the fascinating underwater sport a go, she immediately contacted diving instructor Gary Shaleen, the owner of Fantasea Scuba and Travel in Burnsville.

She asked him if he would be willing to teach her to scuba dive and his immediate response was "Let's do it!". Recalling the moment when he first spoke to Duncan and accepted her request without a moment of hesitation, Gary said: "It was a no-brainer"

Shaleen swam close by to offer Duncan assistance during her final certification test, which she completed on Wednesday, thus becoming a certified instructor.

"So we're just basically right next to each other, following each other along. So, we'll give okay signals, she'll feel my hand, then she'll give okay back, or if we're going to go down or go up, we'll communicate," Shaleen explained.

Overjoyed at achieving her scuba diving quest Duncan said: "Of course, some people think I'm crazy, but that's just what they think,"

Ahsa Duncan first started fantasising about scuba diving when she visited the shark tank at the Mall of America three years ago on October 2008. She explained how being underwater was the one time when her heightened sense of hearing goes numb, almost completely silent.

Duncan explains: "I like the feeling of it, because you're weightless underwater, and you don't hear much sounds. And if you do, you can't really tell where the sounds coming from,"

When asked by WCCO-TV which would be the first scuba diving destinationshe would like to go to, Duncan replied: "Mall of America".

She also added that she looks forward to taking scuba diving holidays abroad and hopes to one day travel to the Great Barrier Reef to swim with the dolphins. Since she was so keen at experiencing the shark tan in the Mall of America, scuba diving with sharks in some exotic scuba diving destinations might be her next challenge.

At present her only limitation when scuba diving abroad or at home is that she must at all times be accompanied by two supervising divers.