18-Year-Old Rossi Johnson Recognized as Youngest Canadian Certified PADI Divemaster
Ontario cold-water diver earns professional-level PADI certification at 18 years, 7 months and 11 days after training in the Great Lakes and pursuing a future in marine research.
By Atlas Editorial Team
28 September 2026 • Tobermory [Canada]
The Water Doesn’t Care How Old You Are
In Tobermory, Ontario, scuba diving does not begin with palm trees or warm blue water. It begins with the Great Lakes.
The water is cold enough to punish carelessness. Below the surface are shipwrecks, rock formations and the preserved remains of vessels that have spent decades resting in freshwater. This is where Rossi Johnson learned to dive, and where, on July 31, 2026, he became a certified PADI Divemaster at 18 years, 7 months and 11 days old.
Following a review of Rossi’s credentials and publicly available records, Atlas World Records recognized Johnson as the Youngest Canadian Certified PADI Divemaster.
For Rossi, however, becoming the youngest was never really the objective.
“I had no idea there was anything special about what I was doing,” he said. “I was just trying to reach my goal of being as certified as I could be to do the work in the water I wanted.”
That interest began years before he ever strapped on a tank. Rossi remembers being fascinated by marine life by the time he was six. Marine biology and zoology became natural areas of interest in school, but eventually he began questioning whether studying the ocean from a classroom or laboratory would be enough.
He wanted to be in it.
“Where best to start to understand than in it?” he said.
At 14, Rossi earned his first PADI Open Water certification. His instructors noticed something immediately. Johany Descoteaux was surprised by how naturally he took to diving, while PADI Course Director Rich Henning initially assumed Rossi must have already accumulated far more underwater experience.
People began calling him “the Seal.”
A Canadian Education Below the Surface
Most popular images of scuba diving involve tropical reefs, warm seas and brightly colored fish. Rossi’s education looked considerably colder.
Much of his development took place around Tobermory and Fathom Five National Marine Park, one of Canada’s best-known freshwater diving destinations. Rossi says he has dived every site within the park and has also explored other Canadian waters, including Lake Superior and the Pacific coast of British Columbia.
The wrecks became part classroom, part playground.
Lake Huron remains his favorite. Rossi points to the clarity of the water and the remarkable preservation of freshwater shipwrecks, including dives on sites such as the Niagara II. He has also developed an appreciation for the less forgiving conditions elsewhere: silt, currents, reduced visibility and water temperatures that make equipment choices consequential rather than cosmetic.
One of his instructors, Lonny Kirlin, once told him, “If you can dive here in a semi-dry, then you can dive anywhere.”
Rossi took that almost literally.
While many cold-water divers rely heavily on drysuits, Rossi says he generally prefers a semi-dry suit and has used a drysuit only a handful of times. Even in water hovering around 7 degrees Celsius, he tends to stay submerged while others begin thinking about warmth.
“I’d say I’m a resilient diver,” he said. “I stay in while everyone else runs to the warmers.”
There is another Canadian habit Rossi learned early: leave the water better than you found it. During his first certification, he was given a collection bag for removing garbage underwater. He has continued participating in the stewardship of the places where he dives, including helping maintain the environment around Tobermory’s wreck sites.
The cold, the wrecks and the responsibility have become inseparable from the way he understands diving.
Getting Closer to the Work
For Rossi, Divemaster is not the end of a certification ladder. It is access.
His original fascination with marine biology has evolved into a desire to work closer to the physical side of marine research: research vessels, underwater surveys, specimen collection, conservation work and the jobs that require someone to actually descend beneath the surface.
“I want to be in there with animals, looking in their eyes and feeling what they feel,” he said.
That ambition helps explain why the certifications accumulated so quickly.
Rossi had already achieved PADI Master Scuba Diver as a teenager and has continued adding training, including Peak Performance Buoyancy and Self-Reliant Diver. Each qualification, in his mind, represents another capability rather than another item for a résumé.
He credits instructors Milon at Divers Den, Lonny Kirlin and Rich Henning with shaping different parts of his development. Divers Den in Tobermory has been the primary PADI dive operation in his journey, with Dive Life also forming part of his Canadian diving experience. Kirlin taught him resourcefulness with equipment. Milon helped establish the fundamentals. Henning helped Rossi understand how far professional diving might take him toward his larger goals.
His parents, Rossi is quick to add, made the entire progression possible by supporting the travel, training and cost required to keep moving forward.
Now 18, he has reached the professional side of recreational diving earlier than most, but he is in no rush to declare exactly where it ends.
A captain’s licence is somewhere on the horizon. So are research vessels, marine science and more advanced underwater work. For the moment, Rossi says he wants to learn what being a Divemaster actually means outside of a course.
“I’m not really sure right now,” he said. “I’m just being pulled along by the current.”
For someone whose life has increasingly moved beneath the surface, that may be an appropriate place to be.
Certified by Atlas World Records on 21 September 2026