GIBSONBURG, Ohio — Slicing his cupped hands through the chilly water to propel himself forward, John Harris made his way to the submerged platforms at Whitestar Quarry.

He checked the depth on his gauges, flooded his mask and cleared out the water, and took out the mouthpiece of his regulator as a demonstration of how he would share air.

It was a typical lesson for those learning how to scuba dive. But the smile that spread across his face as he floated on his back in the water after the first of his four certification dives showed something very different.

Despite being paralyzed in a dirt-bike crash not quite a year ago, the 17-year-old Petersburg, Mich., resident was now one stroke closer to being a certified scuba diver.

“I used to swim all the time,” he said after he and his sister, Ashley, finished their first open-water dive. “I never thought it would be fun but it is. I like being free in the water.”

The teen said he doesn’t remember much about July 20, 2010. He and some friends were practicing at a dirt bike track in Milan, Mich., when he hit a jump wrong and was hurled through the air, end-over-end.

When he landed, he broke two vertebrae in his back.

“I remember being hurt, a helicopter ride, and [nothing more until] two weeks later,” he said, adding that although he had a broken back, he doesn’t recall feeling any pain.

At age 16 and with goals of entering an amateur-level national dirt bike competition, he was paralyzed from the waist down. And life for the adventurous teenager was about to drastically change.

“I can’t explain it, I have no idea why,” his father, Rod, said while reflecting on the crash. “But it is what it is. You just have to get on with it and all along, [John] has pulled us through this.”

Despite his life-changing injury, the teen hasn’t slowed down. He worked hard at therapy and rehabilitation and often exceeded the goals that were set for him.

Six weeks after the crash, he returned home. Three months later, he completed outpatient therapy.

Mr. Harris said that was when the family realized that his son needed another goal.

“That’s when we signed up for scuba diving,” he said.

The Harrises approached a Toledo dive shop, Aqua Hut on Reynolds Road, where owner Jeff Davis offered adaptive scuba diving.

Together with his sister, Ashley, 19, John began learning the fundamentals of the sport.

This past weekend, he was certified as an open-water diver.

Diveheart, a nonprofit organization founded a decade ago by Jim Elliott, was created with the goal of offering the world of scuba to those with disabilities.

Believing that diving would provide a self-esteem boost, Mr. Elliott said that he has since learned that diving has therapeutic benefits as well.

And once submerged in a zero-gravity environment, most people find that they are not limited by their disability and the possibilities become endless.

Mr. Elliott said his organization has helped bring thousands of people underwater with a variety of disabilities, including a woman who had no limbs and another who was deaf and blind.

And every year the organization and its mission continue to expand.

Based in Downers Grover, Ill., Diveheart is a nonprofit organization that teaches not only those with disabilities to dive but also those who want to become adaptive scuba instructors or dive buddies.

“We’ve trained hundreds and hundreds of instructors and dive buddies. Then they go out there like the team in Toledo and touch the lives of others,” Mr. Elliott said.

“We want to create a paradigm in a person’s life,” he added. “Now it’s not [a young man] in a wheelchair, it’s [a young man] the scuba diver.”

Young Harris doesn’t use his legs to propel himself through the water, and weights are secured to his ankles to keep his body level.

And that, said Mr. Davis, is the only difference between him and any of Aqua Hut’s other students.

“It gives you freedom again, that’s what I’ve been told,” Mr. Davis said of the interest he’s seen in scuba diving.

The teen said he is confronted every day with the fact that life is not the same.

But it is something that he has accepted and to which he continues to adapt.

He now uses a wheelchair although with hard work and help from a Detroit rehabilitation center, he plans to one day walk again using braces and crutches.

And although he won’t return to his earlier racing days on his dirt bike, a new modified version of his bike will be waiting for him to ride at a fund-raising event next month.

Even his home is different — thanks to the hard work and donations of friends and family who built an addition to the house complete with a wheelchair-accessible bedroom and bathroom.

Yet despite the changes, he said he doesn’t intend to have any of it slow him down.

Now, if only he could get his sister, who is training to be his scuba diving buddy, to get over her fear of fish.

“I want to see sharks, but she’s too scared,” he said with a smile.

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