Trans-led scuba diving company caters to queer travelers

Niko Kowell had long given up his dream to spend his life in the depths of the ocean.

Then the pandemic happened.

The 40-year-old transgender non-profit professional spent his life advocating for the transgender and queer community at San Francisco Community Health’s Trans: Thrive, a drop-in program. After spending 14 years working his way up from program assistant to associate director of health equity — where he managed millions of dollars in city and state contracts — Kowell hit a wall during COVID-19 and quit in September 2021.

From there, Kowell pivoted to his other life-long passion: scuba diving.

Since childhood, the ocean has been a playground for Kowell and his three siblings during family vacations in the Caribbean and Florida. The Cincinnati native has been scuba diving for more than 20 years. He got certified when he was 18 years old as a high school graduation present from his mother, the Bay Area Reporter reported.

“I’ve always just been fascinated and in love with ocean,” he said. “Both of my parents loved the ocean.”

After leaving the non-profit world, Kowell took a job working at Bamboo Reef Scuba Diving Centers, San Francisco’s lone dive shop in the South of Market neighborhood, to become a scuba instructor teaching a range of diving classes. He also continued volunteering at the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39, something he has done for 12 years. Recently, he became the dive safety officer at the aquarium.

“I’ve always wanted to pursue this path,” he said. “I can always go get another job down the road if I need to, but I’m like, ‘Let’s see what happens if I become an instructor.’”

A year after starting to work at the dive shop, he developed his diving business, Narwhal Divers, at the Transgender District’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator program. The accelerator program is a four-month free entrepreneur bootcamp for transgender and queer people of color who are interested in starting a business in San Francisco.

Narwhal whales are the unicorns of the sea, with a single tusk projecting from what appears to be their head, but it’s their mouth. The whales can be found in the fjords, or narrow glacier inlets, of Northeastern Canada, Greenland, and the Arctic Ocean’s Atlantic sector, according to One Earth.

The journey to launching Narwhal Divers and building the community he envisions has been “slow growth,” Kowell said. It has also been intentional and multi-pronged from building community to creating diversity, inclusion, and equity to putting the pieces together to his first dive trip last December.

“The trip in December was a pretty big, kind of exciting deal for me,” he said. On that trip, four adaptive dive buddies from Narwhal Divers were certified by Diveheart, which is a diving group that makes diving accessible to people who have disabilities.

“I sort of just fell in love with it,” he said. “It was just super fun and exciting.”

“I’ve been really interested in centering the people that are left out of mainstream diving, which is basically anybody who’s not a white straight cis man,” said Kowell, who became certified as an adaptive diver in 2023. This year he also was certified as a swim and mermaid instructor.

Taking the plunge

For the longest time, Kowell was often the only queer and only transgender person in a dive group. It’s always been nerve-wracking in a sport that is largely dominated by white cisgender men, he said, but he knows other queer divers like him are out there. He said they just need to see themselves and have the barriers removed for the expensive sport.

“I’ve had mostly good experiences in the world of diving,” he said, “but it’s always a little nerve wracking getting on the boat with a bunch of random strangers.”

“In this situation, we might be strangers, we might not all know each other, but we’re gonna come into it with the lens of that is a trans and queer-centered trip,” Kowell said, adding that he vets all hotels, boat operators, and diving guides as well as being on the trips himself with some members of his dive buddies team.

Mexico dive trips

Narwhal Divers is offering two trips to Mexico this year: Puerto Vallarta in May and Cozumel in August.

The four-day dive trip to Puerto Vallarta during Vallarta Pride is sold out. Currently, there are eight spots available on the seven-night Cozumel dive trip August 11-18.

Cozumel is an island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula near Playa del Carmen, in the Caribbean Sea.

Rachel Schiff, a queer non-binary femme who uses they/them pronouns, has been diving for nearly a decade. They are excited about going on the Puerto Vallarta dive trip with Narwhal Divers.

“I’ve never been on a trip with other community members,” said Schiff who has followed Narwhal Divers for a couple of years. “I love the idea of being in the water, which is such a special sacred place, with individuals who often can share a joint philosophy and approach in life.”

Schiff also noted the importance of queer/transgender spaces in the current political climate with anti-LGBTQ legislation spreading across the United States.

“It feels especially crucial to prioritize and carve out time for joy, revelry and embodiment,” and to connect with nature, they said. Schiff added, “There’s also a deep meditation or meditative state and calm that one finds deep underwater,” which they hope other LGBTQ community members will learn about. 

Kowell rented the entire Blue Note Scuba boat to create a safe environment for the all-queer and transgender dive trip, which will be guided by bisexual independent dive guide and instructor Ludyvine “Ludy” Roux, who wears a pink tutu and bunny ears under the water. Roux did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Kowell is also looking forward to hanging out in Cozumel at local spots, such as Pose, a new gay bar he discovered on the island during his trip in December, with his guests and team.

“It was so much fun [and had] one of the best drag shows I’ve ever seen in my life there,” he said.

The Cozumel dive trip includes the hotel and eight dives in the Playacar Reef over four days starting at $1,500 per person. The trips do not include flights, meals and entertainment, local transportation, diving rental equipment (except for Puerto Vallarta), or any additional excursions or trip extensions.

Kowell is working to make the dive trips financially accessible, and pricing is currently at an introductory rate.

Other dive locations are being considered for future trips, he said.

Queering diving

“I want to create spaces where somebody’s identity is going to be respected and supported,” he said.

“When I go to strange places, I’m anxious,” Kowell said, adding its additionally nerve racking for new divers or being in a new group of people, many who are white straight cis-men. Kowell’s programs and trips welcome everyone, but he is focused on people who have different body types and abilities.

Kowell believes his skills as a non-profit health care leader and longtime diver have given him the “unique set of skills” to combine his two passions — scuba diving and the queer community.

While it’s been scary at times, he’s also been surprised by the positive response he’s received from the diving community when talking about LGBTQ issues.

People are now coming to him asking for advice about how to be more sensitive to the LGBTQ divers and how to update the language in their diving manuals to be more inclusive, he added.

Kowell has also been surprised by the level of interest in diving by LGBTQ people. In search of community, he launched a Facebook group, Queer & Trans Dive Club, in 2022. The group now has nearly 350 members from around the world.

The response to his outreach and marketing efforts has also been overwhelming, he said. People have reached out to him expressing surprise that they found a diving group catering to LGBTQ individuals.

“This is amazing,” he said. “It’s been really wonderful to get that sort of feedback.