Zach Laste is a only 29 years old but has been on over 200 exotic dives, filled with sharks 30 feet long, sunken ships, and other dangerous yet interesting things, since the young age of 12, the youngest age to get certified.

Zach is a Radiology resident at Froedtert Hospital where he reads x-rays and helps heal people through imaging. Although he has a very important job as a doctor, he takes time off to do what he loves.

By the time Zach was 10 years old, he was already interested in scuba diving because his family members had already been certified. When he was 11 years old he got to experience scuba on a resort course, where people without licenses were able to try the gear on and get a feel for the sport. When he was twelve years old, Zach had waited long enough to finally get certified. His first dive was on the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean.

Zach doesn’t dive alone, most of the time.  He is fortunate to have family members who also go along with him. His father, mother, and brother both have unique characteristics under water; his father breathes very heavy under water and often has to surface early, and his brother, on the other hand, just acts like a lunatic by pulling pranks and during somersaults all while underwater. His mother also comes along and just “goes with the flow”. Zach also added that his fiancee, Jen, has not yet gone scuba diving but he hopes to take her soon.

He has an advanced open water diving license, which allows him to go a hundred feet down, but he admits that it isn’t a problem if he goes 120 or 130 feet down. He had also taken a class to be able to search around caves, or places where there is no immediate way out.

One of Zach’s best scuba diving trips was a shark dive in the Bahamas. He was instructed to go on his knees with his arms to the side, the special part of this dive was that his dive master was suited up in chain mail with dead bait all over himself to feed the sharks that would brush against you to get to the food. Legend has it that the dive master was attacked a few years after they went.

“Diving is awesome, fun, and a really safe recreation. Not only does it allow you to go see these awesome things underwater, but it’ll take you really cool places in the world where there’s plenty of stuff to do and see on land that you won’t see anywhere else. It opens up the entire world to you, and even more remote areas that people that aren’t divers wouldn’t even think of going to.”