Michelle Courington had lived around the Cayman Islands and Costa Rica before moving to a place seemingly unfit for her scuba diving passion.

She moved to Colorado’s Front Range, where in 1996 she opened One World Dive and Travel, a business for certifying, outfitting and guiding local scuba divers to farflung waters across the globe.

Around Denver, Courington’s semi-desert surroundings were far from discouraging.

“My whole family was like, What, you’re doing a dive shop in land-locked Colorado?” Courington recalled. “And I was like, ‘Hell yeah, it’s one of the best markets in the country.’”

No ocean, no problem.

Professional Association of Diving Instructors, the certifying agency tied to Courington’s shop and several others in Colorado, has considered this a top-three state for most certified divers per capita. The other common two benefit from coasts: Florida and California.

Colorado’s status has been unsurprising to Troy Juth. he started Underwater Connections back in the 1980s in Colorado Springs. Juth has maintained the shop as one of the nation’s top producers for certifying divers, who go from classroom learning, to pool instruction, to dives in lakes that prepare them for the exotic excursions of their honeymoons or family vacations.

Coloradans want to scuba dive — like Texans and Floridians want to ski, Juth said.

“They have the water, they don’t have the mountains,” he said.

We want what we don’t have. And indeed, we in Coloradans are go-getters.

“Active and outdoorsy,” Courington said. “And the only thing you really can’t do in Colorado is anything to do with the ocean. So if you’re gonna leave Colorado, most people seek the ocean.”

We don’t exactly seek Colorado’s waters for scuba diving.

Around Denver, instructors popularly lead days at Chatfield Reservoir and Aurora Reservoir, where a small airplane has been submerged to be a fun find. Others learn and train north at Horsetooth Reservoir and Carter Lake.

These are cold, murky waters — not the kind of warm, clear-blue waters appealing to divers. Coloradans will drive for a couple of rare exceptions, however small: New Mexico’s aptly-named Blue Hole, and Utah’s geothermal Homestead Crater, which stays balmy year-round.

And then there are the occasional “scuba packers.”

“Some people will go to higher altitude mountain lakes,” Courington said. “Some of those high-altitude lakes have really good visibility. But there’s not a ton to see.”

There are trout and rocks. There’s not the colorful coral and vast array of marine life that thrill divers.

To be surrounded by all of that life and beauty — that’s the ultimate, said Kim Canatsey, a longtime diving instructor.

“You just get down there and you’re with nature,” she said, “and I think that’s what Coloradans like, being with nature.”