Dottie Frazier

Dottie May Frazier was born July 15th, 1922. In 1955, she made history as the world’s first female scuba instructor.

Swimming by the age of 3, Dottie began her underwater adventures early. She participated in competitive sailing by the age of 6, and rescued her 5-year-old sister from drowning when she was only 7.

Recognizing her incredible talent for swimming and diving, Dottie’s father put her forward for the Junior Olympics when she was 10, but she was held back by a spinal injury. Despite this, she continued to free dive (or skin dive, as it was called) every chance she got, even before she was healed. By the 1940s, she was a skin diver instructor. When scuba equipment started to make its way onto the scene, Dottie was hesitant. Dottie recalls in an interview that her initial impression of scuba gear was: “[it] was for sissies, for people who couldn’t hold their breath long enough to catch their dinner.”

However, Dottie soon warmed up to the new equipment. In 1955, she applied for an available spot in an underwater instructors certification course, but was turned away and told the course was for men only. She told her friend, fellow diver Jim Christiansen, about the incident and he asked her if they returned her check. “When I told him no, they had not, he said, ‘Just be ready; I’m picking you up,’” Dottie recalled in 2016.

Despite the pushback, Dottie successfully became a certified scuba instructor, and was the first woman in the world to do so. She was met with doubts by her mostly-male students that she could be a competent teacher, but she naturally proved them wrong. She operated her own dive shop in Long Beach, California for 15 years, designing and selling some of the first wetsuits made specifically for women.

Dottie was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2000. She passed away in February, 2022 at the age of 99. Her incredible legacy is detailed in her 2019 autobiography Trailblazer: The Extraordinary Life of Diving Pioneer, Dottie Frazier.