OMS HQ to the HMS Victoria: Tech Gear, Cave Lines & Diving on Vertical Battleships

On this extended tech-diving edition of Pod Diver Radio, we start in the woods of upstate New York at OMS headquarters and end 420 feet down on a British battleship standing vertically on the seafloor. First, Joe visits OMS HQ and sits down with Technical Director Jack Stanton to talk about how OMS was born in the cold, deep wrecks of the Northeast, grew up alongside the early "outlaw" days of tech diving, and now outfits everyone from wreck and cave divers to NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab astronauts. Jack walks us through OMS harnesses, manifolds, lights and how tech gear has evolved from "weird stuff on the dive boat" to mainstream tools for advanced divers. Then we head to Mexico's Yucatán with cave diver, videographer, and former Marine Corps aviator Len Bucko. Len connects cockpit discipline to cave protocols, shares stories of early cenote exploration, Mayan history, haloclines, jungle hammocks, and what it really feels like to lay first line in virgin cave. Back at OMS, Jack returns to detail the new Larry Green cave wing—a narrow, long, non-bungeed BC designed specifically for cave divers—plus updated Slipstream fins, spring straps, and why different environments demand different rigs for wrecks vs. caves. We wrap in High Springs, Florida, where Joe bumps into Christian Francis of Lebanon Divers and dives into the discovery of the long-lost HMS Victoria off Tripoli: a 19th-century British battleship that sank bow-first and now sits perfectly vertical in 150 meters of water. Christian shares the search, the first descents, and the incredible naval history behind Admiral Tryon's fatal maneuver. If you're into OMS gear, cave diving, Northeast wrecks, deep Mediterranean history, and serious tech diving storytelling, this episode is for you. DOWNLOAD AND LISTEN TO AUDIO FILE HERE