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The American civil engineer Amanda Hi-Sea had nearly ten years of career in the construction sector in Los Angeles, United States, before quitting her job in November 2020 to cross the Pacific Ocean aboard a sailboat — a career transition she financed with years of cost-cutting and aggressive saving, following the FIRE method, an acronym in English for financial independence and early retirement. Today she works with coral restoration in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, and shared her journey with People magazine, in a report published on June 22, 2026.
According to People, the change followed a step-by-step script: diving certification obtained in Honduras in 2018, two years living on a sailboat between Mexico and French Polynesia, volunteering in marine restoration projects in Borneo, and finally, a permanent job alongside two organizations in the sector, Ocean Gardener and Murex Resorts. On a daily basis, the former civil engineer maintains underwater nurseries, monitors the health of reefs, and transplants coral seedlings to degraded areas — a technical operation directly linked to dive tourism, an activity that boosts the economy of various coastal regions in Indonesia. The definition she gives for her own job dispenses with jargon: gardener, only underwater.
The FIRE method that funded the exit from civil engineering
The less romantic part of the change came first, and it is what supports everything else. Instead of quitting impulsively, the civil engineer spent years building the financial conditions to be able to say yes when an opportunity arose. The chosen path was the FIRE movement, a method that advocates cutting expenses and saving aggressively to anticipate financial independence and, in practice, buy free time.
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The changes were concrete and measurable. She reduced her standard of living, moved out of her downtown Los Angeles apartment, and began saving with discipline, building the reserve that would later enable the career change without risking her own finances. In practice, the FIRE method worked like an engineering project applied to personal finances: defined goals, calculated cuts, and execution timeline.
It was this reserve, built over years, that turned an unlikely invitation into a financially viable decision. Without it, the proposal that would later arrive via the internet would have been just another ignored message.
The account that didn’t add up in the consolidated career
From the outside, there was nothing to complain about. A civil engineer living in downtown Los Angeles, she had a consolidated career, stable remuneration, and a defined professional path — exactly the script she had set for herself within one of the most competitive job markets in the United States.
The problem appeared in the accounting of the days. “Even though it was exactly the life I had systematically planned for myself, it felt like I spent 95% of my life waiting for the three weeks of vacation I had every year”, she said.
At a certain point, the question became explicit. “What am I doing with my life?” she remembers asking herself at the time. The answer didn’t come ready-made: it was built in stages, with financial and professional decisions made over several years — and none of them involved improvisation.
The diving certification that opened a new market
The entry point was a course. In 2018, a friend invited her to get a diving certification in Honduras, and what was a holiday training became the first step of a complete professional requalification.
The interest in the sea had existed since childhood, among tide pools and aquariums, but breathing underwater was another scale. “Each dive was like awakening a part of me that had been dormant for a long time,” she stated.
The effect was immediate. “I was immediately hooked,” she summarized about the first submerged experience. The diving certification, obtained almost by chance, would become years later the technical foundation of her entire new career in coral restoration.
Azores: contact with another work model
A few months later, another trip showed that there were people structuring their professional lives that way full-time. Sailing through the Azores islands in Portugal, she met people who lived on sailboats and organized work and routine around crossings, exploring remote regions of the planet.
The landscape helped cement the idea. Swimming alongside manta rays and seeing dolphins accompanying the boat left a mark, as much as the life logistics she observed up close during those weeks.
Back at the office, the plan began to take shape. “I was completely fascinated by the idea. When the trip ended, I returned to Los Angeles and went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking: ‘One day, I want to do this,'” she recounted.
The crew member position that appeared online
The opportunity came through a channel she herself opened. After creating a profile on a site that connects sailboats to crew members — a kind of recruitment platform for the nautical sector — the engineer received a message from a captain she didn’t know.
The text was short and direct. “Hey, I’m leaving San Diego on November 1st to sail around the world. Are you interested?” the message said.
She treated the proposal as she would any non-standard selection process: she went to check it out personally. “I met the captain in person once, decided he probably wasn’t a serial killer, and quit my nearly ten-year engineering career the next day”, she stated.
Two years of route across the Pacific Ocean
The change was quick. Within a few weeks, she packed her things, moved onto the sailboat, and left California, thinking it would be a one-year career break.
The timeline stretched on its own. The first year was spent sailing along the coast of Mexico and exploring the Sea of Cortez, before crossing the Pacific Ocean, one of the longest ocean routes on the planet.
Then came the most remote part of the journey. It was another year among the islands of the South Pacific, including French Polynesia, with days split between free diving on reefs and observing marine life, which later became the raw material for her work.
Underwater photography that became a professional gateway
The next step was born from a high-sea neighborhood. She met a couple who worked with professional underwater photography and began to study how they captured what exists below the surface.
The beginning was modest. “I had an action camera and started taking more photos and videos, sharing what I was seeing with friends and family at home on social media,” she said.
Over time, the record ceased to be a travel album. The more time she spent submerged, the more she sought to understand the functioning of the ecosystems she photographed — and it was this technical interest that pushed her towards coral restoration as a profession.
From volunteering in Borneo to permanent work in Indonesia
After two years on board, the priority shifted. She realized she wanted to spend less time sailing and more time underwater, and began volunteering in marine restoration projects in Borneo — the unpaid internship of her new career.
From there came the definitive fit. She then joined coral restoration initiatives in other parts of Indonesia, an area that brought together the skills she had been accumulating since her civil engineering days.
The explanation she gives for her choice is straightforward. “For me, coral restoration represented the perfect intersection of everything I loved: diving, marine life, science, problem-solving, storytelling, and conservation,” she said. Problem-solving, the foundation of any civil engineer’s work, appears at the center of the list.
How the technical work of “underwater gardening” works
The comparison she uses summarizes the service. “The simplest explanation is that I am an underwater gardener planting corals,” she stated.
The tasks follow the logic of a plot — either construction or garden. “Just as a terrestrial gardener cultivates plants, removes weeds, and controls pests, we do the same things underwater,” she explained.
The current work is done in partnership with two organizations in the sector. She works with Ocean Gardener and Murex Resorts in North Sulawesi, maintaining coral nurseries, restoring degraded reefs, and guiding visitors — an operation integrated into the dive tourism chain, one of the economic drivers of Indonesia’s coastal regions.
Reefs: an economic asset under five fronts of pressure
The day-to-day exposes the size of the technical challenge. “Coral reefs support an incredible amount of life but are facing immense pressure due to climate change, overfishing, pollution, diseases, and destructive fishing practices,” she stated.
There are five fronts acting simultaneously on a structure on which entire fishing and tourism chains depend: water warming, excessive fish removal, waste dumping, disease outbreaks, and predatory capture methods. In Brazil, the management of reefs and protected marine areas — such as diving destinations like Abrolhos in Bahia and Fernando de Noronha in Pernambuco — is the responsibility of agencies like ICMBio.
Even so, she reports visible returns in the short term. “If you take a lifeless rubble area, start installing some restoration structures and plant corals on them, you will literally start to see fish and marine life there by the end of the dive,” she said. It is the type of measurable result that brings coral restoration closer to an infrastructure project: structure installed, immediate system response.
What civil engineering took to the bottom of the sea
The promotion of the work on social media has a declared objective. She posts on Instagram and TikTok videos about coral nurseries, restoration projects, and encounters with marine life, showcasing a work environment that most people will never see in person.
The hope is that visibility will translate into support for the projects. “It’s been really cool to do this on a larger scale, showing people how amazing the underwater world is, so hopefully, they feel motivated to protect it,” she said.
In the end, Amanda Hi-Sea’s journey describes a career transition executed methodically: nearly ten years of civil engineering, a period of aggressive savings guided by the FIRE method, technical retraining built on diving certification, volunteering, and field practice, leading to a specialized role within a sector that combines applied science and tourism. Each stage financed and prepared the next — from the apartment in downtown Los Angeles to the coral nurseries of North Sulawesi.
The case also helps to map a niche job that is still little known outside the diving circuit. Reef restoration depends on skilled labor, from certified divers to specialists in monitoring and seedling cultivation, and tends to grow as tourism operators and sector organizations invest in the recovery of areas that ensure their own business — in Indonesia, the Caribbean, or the Brazilian coast.
And you, would you trade a consolidated career for a technical role at the bottom of the sea? Leave your opinion in the comments and share this article with those who work in engineering, diving, or tourism.
