In 1988 Daniel Wills was living in Male’, Republic of Maldives running his own commercial diving company with his wife Linda. There were two “international” hotels on Male’ in those days that had special licenses to serve alcohol to expatriates. One of these hotels was called the Nasandhura Palace Hotel, known to all foreign inebriates as The Nasty.

Being a congenial sort of fellow Daniel taught just about any expat that came to work on Male’ to dive for the price of a couple of Tiger Beers. Once the person was qualified they became one of Dan’s Divers, who met regularly at The Nasty jetty to go out diving and then stop for an after dive Tiger in The Nasty bar on the way home.

In 1989 Mick McGinn came to town. An avid diver from the south of England and a natural for Dan’s Divers, Mick insisted from the very start “we’re frogmen ain’t we?” So it was that Dan’s Frogmen, who met at The Nasty quickly became Dan’s Nasty Frogmen and the official tee shirt was born. Apart from the Tiger Beer logo on the frog’s scuba tank our store is using that tee shirt logo to this day.

By 1990 Linda was so fed up with the amount of work this informal dive group was generating, all free of charge (beg your pardon, for a couple of Tigers) that she demanded Daniel open an official store and employ a full time instructor. He readily agreed and, as usual, left her to do the paperwork. Not being naturally into diving and never having paid attention to the names of other dive stores Linda simply filled in the SSI paperwork with “Dan’s Nasty Frogmen”. Although at first somewhat appalled at the less than exotic appellation of his new dive store, Daniel soon decided that our name seemed to suit our store and, more especially, that the divers really seemed to love our name!