Get your diver’s license

When he was just 10 years old, Matthew Liburdi took his first breaths under water. Metaphorically, he has yet to resurface.

Matthew followed in the footsteps of his father, a scuba diver and underwater photographer he described as the “Jacques Cousteau of our generation.” Joe Liburdi opened Lighthouse Dive Centers in 1975 -- the first family dive shop in the Pacific Northwest.

In the mid-1980s, Joe moved his family and his shop to Southern California. More than 20 years later, Matthew remains committed, like his dad, to bringing the underwater world to anyone who wants to explore it.

Matthew is owner-operator of Liburdi’s Scuba Center at The Camp retail space in Costa Mesa. He moved the shop from Irvine to Costa Mesa six years ago when Shaheen Sadeghi, creator of the “anti-mall” shopping area, lobbied for them to join his newest lifestyle center. “He had a vision of building this shopping center, so we moved over here and built the facility from scratch,” said Matthew.

At the facility, Matthew Liburdi and his scuba professionals teach courses for all abilities, from beginners to the instructor level. He also offers specialty scuba diving certifications like wreck diving, night diving and underwater photography classes.

Irvine resident Mike Faust has been going through level after level of courses at Liburdi’s and is now enrolled in the instructor courses. Faust enjoys the “peacefulness” of the underwater sport and captures it on his submergible camera. Through each level, Faust has stuck with Liburdi’s. “I think the instructors are great, they’re so knowledgeable,” Faust said.” I like the shop too — it’s a big dive shop with a lot to offer.”

Matthew has streamlined the classroom portion of the shop to make it easier for people like Faust, a computer programmer by day, to complete. Matthew sends some of the materials home with his students, who move on to the pool after completing the classroom segment successfully. The pool is salt water chlorinated, and has an artificial reef built into one side, to simulate real-life ocean conditions. The reef also has a swim-through so students can really test their buoyancy abilities.

Matthew puts each piece of equipment he sells through rigorous testing before he puts it on the shelf. He said divers keep safe under water partly due to the instruction they receive, and partly because of the equipment they wear. He’s so confident in his products, he offers a full year of repairs.

Scuba diving has become a widely popular sport, said Matthew, whose primary customer base has evolved from mostly men to women and families. “The sport has evolved so much, the equipment has gotten better,” he said, adding that manufacturers have made major adjustments in the equipment for women and children, making the sport infinitely easier to master.

Scuba diving is often called a lifetime sport, much like surfing. There is an initial investment to get certified, a requirement for open-ocean diving. Matthew charges from $300 to almost $600 for a certification course, depending on whether the student wants group, semi-private or private lessons. Matthew said nearly anyone can complete the course, “from 10 years old to 99 years old,” unless they suffer from a conflicting medical condition like epilepsy.

“To be a good diver you should be relaxed, and diving is so relaxing,” Faust said.

“It’s exploration, it’s adventure, you see the unknown,” Matthew said. “I mean, being able to breath under the water and sustain yourself, it’s phenomenal. I can drop into a foreign environment, stay under water and when I come up I’ll just smile all day.”

The shop offers dive trips to locations all over the world. Of the thousands of scuba trips he has taken, Matthew said his favorite spots are Fiji and, much closer, Catalina Island. “Catalina is one of the best temperate-water diving [spots] in the world,” he said. “There are endless kelp forests and a myriad of things to see -- from giant sea bass and a harbor seal following you around to the barracuda, kelp bass and the Garibaldi’s.”

Liburdi’s offers year-round courses, and don’t worry, the pool’s heated. For more information visit www.librudisscuba.com.