The League of Extraordinary Divers Podcast

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Joe Dituri – Hyperbaric Medicine Researcher & Exploration Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary hyperbaric medicine researcher and diving explorer Joe Dituri. Bio Commander Joseph Dituri enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1985. He served continuously on active service upon various ships and shore stations where he was involved in every aspect of diving and special operations work from saturation diving and deep submergence to submersible design and clearance diving. Now that he is retired from 28 years of active service to the United States, he is the president of the International Board of Undersea Medicine. He also volunteers his time as the CEO of the Association for Marine Exploration. He is an invited speaker on motivational, sea and space related topics. Joseph earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of South Carolina as well as a masters degree in Astronautical Engineering from Naval Post Graduate School in California. Additionally, he is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of South Florida. Joseph is the author of numerous diver-training manuals, a co-author of the book “Tao of Survival Underwater”, a contributing author to the Navy Diving Manual, and has been published in several journals including those produced by the American Society of Naval Engineers and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. CDR Dituri was also a member of the prestigious special operations parachute demonstration team. He is a class “D” Licensed Sky Diver, a one atmosphere suit Pilot and a Level three certified Systems Engineer and Program Manager for the Department of Defense. Commander Dituri’s personal awards include: three Navy Achievement Medals, a Joint Service Achievement Medal, an Army Commendation Medal, four Navy Commendation Medals, a Joint Service Commendation Medal and a Joint Meritorious Service Medal. He is also a member of the American Bureau of Shipping Special Committee on Building and Classing Undersea Vehicles and Hyperbaric Systems and the National Offshore Advisor Committee for Commercial Diving Safety. Joseph enjoys writing books, skydiving and has a long-term goal of being a civilian astronaut. Items In This Podcast First scuba dive while changing zinc plates at the age of 10Career in US Navy divingFinding a new species of fishHyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and traumatic brain injuriesDrdeepsea.comUndersea Oxygen ClinicJoe’s new book Secrets In Depth Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD062 : Joe Dituri appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Jeff Bozanic – Scientific Diving Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary scientific diver and explorer Jeff Bozanic. Today’s guest is one of the premiere scientific divers and explorers on the planet. Bio Jeffrey Bozanic is the president of Next Generation Services, where he provides consulting and training services in the diving market. Clients include rebreather manufacturers, training agencies and legal agencies. Bozanic has participated in or led more than 70 diving expeditions in the past 30 years, to places like Palau, the Canary Islands and Antarctica. He was certified as a NAUI Instructor in 1978 and is active in teaching cave diving, rebreather, nitrox, decompression and trimix diving courses. He has published extensively on diving education topics, with a heavy emphasis on diving safety. Bozanic has edited and reviewed many diving textbooks and is the author of Mastering Rebreathers, as well as the senior Technical Editor of the NOAA Diving Manual. He has served on several boards of directors in the diving community, including as Chairman of the NSS-CDS, Vice Chairman of NAUI and Treasurer of the AAUS. He currently serves on the TDI Technical Advisory Committee and on multiple diving control boards.In 2007, he was honored as the DAN/Rolex Diver of the Year, and in 2015, he was the recipient of the AAUS Conrad Limbaugh Award for Scientific Diving Leadership. In 2018 Beneath the Sea selected him as the Diver of the Year Science. Items In This Podcast Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea InspirationHigh school scuba classScuba dredging for gold camping tripScouting helped with diving successUnderwater gold mining in the Bolivian jungleRebreathers in the industryMexican cave adventure with a speedo, machete and poison ivyAntartica naked ice dive photo shootFavorite diving locationsJeffery.Bozanic facebook“Mastering Rebreathers” Best PublishingExpeditions Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD061 : Jeff Bozanic appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Nadia Aly – Underwater Photographer and Expedition Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary photographer and expedition leader Nadia Aly. Today’s guest is the founder and creative talent behind diving’s largest social media brand – I’m sure you’ve heard of it – ScubaDiverLife Bio Nadia Aly is an award winning wildlife photographer, with a focus on underwater marine life. Her primary goal is to educate people globally, about the diverse populations of sea creatures that exist in our oceans. She captures their beauty and uniqueness with her camera and then publishes these photographs and videos. She does this in an effort to raise awareness and interest in supporting efforts to conserve our oceans and their inhabitants. As she continues to master the art of underwater photography, she takes interested clients on numerous underwater expeditions every year, through her company Scuba Diver Life Expeditions. Her specialties are the sardine run out of South Africa and the humpback swims out of Tonga, where she takes guests to swim up close and personal with the whales. Nadia is also the owner of scubadiverlife.com an online news portal for scuba diving and ocean conservation enthusiast. She holds a masters degree in digital media from the center for digital media in Vancouver BC. This program is a result of joint collaboration between university of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute and private industry sponsors. Items In This Podcast Discover Scuba at age 12Masters in Fine ArtsHow entering a video contest started her professional diving journeyTraveling 10 months of the yearFavorite diving destinationsScuba Diver LifeNadiaAly.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD060 : Nadia Aly appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Bret Gilliam – Diving Industry Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary diving industry professional Bret Gilliam. Todays guest has done just about everything in diving. Bio Bret Gilliam has been professionally involved in the diving industry since 1971, a career now spanning over 50 years. Since beginning diving in 1959, he has logged over 19,000 dives around the world. His background includes scientific expeditions, military/commercial projects, operating hyperbaric diving treatment facilities, liveaboard dive vessels and luxury yachts, retail dive store & Caribbean resort operation and ownership, as well as filming projects for movies, television series, and documentaries. He was founder and President of six multi-national diving companies including V. I. Divers Ltd., AMF Yacht Charters, Ocean Quest Cruise Line, TDI/SDI, UWATEC, DiveSafe Insurance, and four diving magazines. He is President of the consulting corporation, OCEAN TECH, since founding that company in 1971. Items In This Podcast Meeting Ernest HemingwayWorked bring fish to aquariums at 11 years of ageNavy divingFilming The DeepOnboard The CalypsoCreating a diving cruise lineStarting IANTDStarting TDIDiving with Lauren HuttonDiving Pioneers and InnovatorsDeep Diving RevisedMixed Gas Diving Book Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD059 : Bret Gilliam appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Becky Kagan Schott – Underwater Director of Photography, Photographer and Technical Diving Instructor In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary underwater photographer and technical diving instructor Becky Kagan Schott. Today we interview another young gun legend in the diving industry. And that is Underwater Director of Photography, Photographer and Technical Diving Instructor Becky Kagan Schott. Bio Becky is a 5-time Emmy award winning underwater cameraman and photographer who’s work appears on major networks including National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Red Bull. She specializes in capturing images in extreme underwater environments including caves, under ice and deep shipwrecks. Her projects have taken her all over the world from the Arctic to Antarctic and many exciting locations in between. She’s filmed new wrecks, discoveries to cave exploration and even diving cage-less with great white sharks. She’s earned a reputation for being able to bring back quality imagery from harsh conditions. Her biggest passion is shooting haunting images of deep shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. She combines her artistic style with powerful stories of tragedy, mystery and survival to ignite the viewers imagination. She’s constantly pushing the limits of technology and trying new creative techniques to capture the beauty of the underwater world. She’s a frequent contributor to several Dive Magazines and her photography has been used in books, museums, and advertising. Becky has been actively diving for 26 years and technical diving for 22 of them. She has been an Instructor for 2 decades and is currently an active TDI Mixed Gas CCR Instructor. Becky leads expeditions all over the world to capture unique images that inspire others to explore our planet! Items In This Podcast Try Scuba at 12Great Lakes at 13Cavern Diver at 14Instructor at 18Florida AquariumIsle Royale National ParkAndy TorbetWheat WreckDiving glaciersAbaco’s Crystal CavesLiquid ProductionsMEG Diver Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD058 : Becky Kagan Schott appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Tom Leaird – Legendary Underwater Educator In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary diving educator Tom Leaird. Well, today’s guest has been in my professional and personal life for 25 years. And today I’m delighted to introduce him to you. Why do I say introduce him to you? Well, because he’s one of the most humble and unassuming dive professionals in our industry, one who has done amazing things, and I’m proud to call him a mentor of mine. Well, this is Tom Leaird. Bio Tom Leaird had an occupation in photography with Prestige Portraits and Lifetouch from 1957 to 1988, 31 years in professional photography. Then in the US Army 1961 through 1964, he was a photo lab specialist. And then came diving. He has been a certified diver with the YMCA Scuba program since 1961. He also became a YMCA Scuba instructor in June of 1969. He is charter president of Delaware. Dive scuba club did that in 1968 and continues to sponsor it today. He is the owner of Leaird’s Underwater Service in Muncie, Indiana. And that has been around since 1971. He was also the YMCA Scuba regional commissioner, which is also known as field coordinator from 1974 to 1986. He was a member of the YMCA Scuba advisory committee from 1980. And he was chair of the advisory committee from 1999 to 2003. Tom is also director of education and standards for Scuba Educators International. That was started after the YMCA of the USA retired its program. Tom continued that through SEI, Tom is also the CEO of PDIC international, which was purchased in 2010. Tom is also on the board of directors of the WRSTC. That’s the World Recreational Scuba Training Council from 1996 to present and he’s been president. And he’s also member of the board of directors of DEMA, the Diving Equipment Market Association. And that’s from 2011 to present, he’s a member of the board of directors of the Muncie family YMCA, treasurer of the Muncie family YMCA, and has served as interim president C E O of Muncie Family YMCA Associations – six branches with over 125 employees. Tom has authored several books and manuals, including many of them for the YMCA the YMCA slam manual that scuba life saving and management also Institute director, manual leadership, preparation, manual crossover preparation, manual standards and procedures manual the YMCA Scuba sport diving tables, search and recovery manual. Let’s go ice diving Divemaster assistant instructor, manual diving fundamentals for leadership, and this thing called scuba diving comfort, advanced diver instructor guide learn scuba diving and learn advanced scuba diving. He has also won the Bernard E. Empleton award for service to the YMCA of the USA. Tom has held YMCA Scuba leadership institutes at Ball State University, Oregon, Hawaii, Texas, Florida, Connecticut, Missouri, Germany, and Greece. As of December, 2021, Tom has completed over 3,750 dives that include 2000 hours underwater. And as of 2016, Tom’s local instructor group is working on class 1100. This has included over 5,000 certified student divers at the basic and advanced levels. Tom is CEO and president of Phillips Outdoor Center purchased April 1st, 2010 as a nonprofit environmental education center. That includes scuba diving scouting, public safety, and other water training. His son, Dan Leaird is a PhD in research scientist at Eglan Air Force base, and also has four grandchildren. His daughter Tamara is the store manager at Underwater Service and his wife, Bobbi, he’s been married to since 1963. Items In This Podcast Early YMCA – no swimsuits allowed!Inspired by Sea Hunt – Zale ParryFirst YMCA Scuba Instructor courseVolunteering for YMCA Scuba ProgramWriting training and standards manualsYMCA Scuba becomes Scuba Educators InternationalAcquiring PDICFavorite diving destinationsThe dark side of public safety divingDiving a Mark V diving helmetTips for diversLeaird’s Underwater Service Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD057 : Tom Leaird appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Michael Lang, Ph.D. – Legendary Scientific Diver and Underwater Researcher In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary scientific diver and underwater researcher Michael Lang. Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today. Today special guest is an absolute icon in not only the scientific community but in the diving industry as well. Bio Michael A. Lang, Ph.D., is an environmental physiologist, marine biologist, author, and international lecturer with experience as a scientific, recreational (NAUI 5879) and commercial diver trainer. Michael’s long-term interests in marine science, hyperbaric medicine and diving physiology allowed him to serve as Senior Vice President of OxyHeal Health Group, Senior Research Fellow at The Ocean Foundation, and currently as Co-Director of the San Diego Center of Excellence in Diving and Research Faculty in the UC San Diego Emergency Medicine Department. Lang served as director for nonprofit organizations, including the American Academy of Underwater Sciences, Divers Alert Network, the Academy of Underwater Arts & Sciences/NOGI, chaired Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society committees, and advised as expert consultant the National Science Foundation, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy, and Conservation International. Former service as Marine Collector/Curator at San Diego State University, Director of the Smithsonian Marine Science Network, Smithsonian Scientific Diving Officer, and National Science Foundation Polar Diving Safety Officer, Lang holds a B.Sc. in Marine Biology from San Diego State University, and a Doctor Philosophiae in Environmental Physiology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology School of Medicine in Trondheim. He is fluent in five languages, has published over 60 scientific papers, popular articles and presented 350 seminars/papers on current marine science and diving safety topics. Lang is the chair and chief editor of 24 international, interdisciplinary symposia and workshop proceedings. His research concerns marine science with special reference to the development and use of new technologies for working safely under water in extreme and remote environments. Dr. Lang’s 2013 Smithsonian book is titled “Research and Discoveries: The Revolution of Science through Scuba.” His honors include DAN/Rolex Diver of the Year, U.S. Antarctica Service Medal, NAUI Outstanding Instructor Award, Smithsonian Special Act Award, UHMS Excellence in Diving Medicine Award, AAUS Conrad Limbaugh Scientific Diving Leadership Award, DEMA Reaching Out Award, and the AUAS NOGI Award for Science. Items In This Podcast Certified to dive in 1978Early AAUSFirst diving computer workshopFirst ascent rate workshopFirst repetitive diving workshopFirst Nitrox diving symposiumPolar divingScience diving programsReverse diving profiles workshopSmithsonian diving safety officerBreatholding workshopAntarctic diving McMurdo StationA missing dive boat at Clipperton AtolTip for divers Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD056 : Michael Lang appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Cathryn Castle Garcia & Capt. Gui Garcia – Legendary Underwater Creatives In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary underwater creatives Cathryn Castle Garcia and Capt. Gui Garcia. Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today. There is a duo in our industry who has impacted the arts, and the creative side of our underwater world, through photo, video, art and writing. Bio Cathryn Castle Garcia and Gui Garcia are veteran scuba instructors and owners of C2G2 Productions, a multimedia company specializing in underwater and wildlife 8k film production, photography, editing and publishing. Cathryn has served as a magazine editor for more than 20 years and edits/publishes books for indie authors. She recently launched DeeplyDesigns.com, an apparel and accessory company that creates designs for ocean lovers, scuba divers and mermaids. Gui is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer and is also a US Coast Guard-licensed master mariner with decades of experience as a superyacht captain. He and Cathryn serve as crew on expedition yachts. The couple also leads adventure tours and photo expeditions to remote dive destinations worldwide. Their first book, Ocean Metaphor: Unexpected Life Lessons from the Sea is available in select retail outlets and on Amazon.com. Items In This Podcast Published marine science author at 16Archeology diving on a pepper wreckLooking into the eye of a baby whaleYou have a baby octopus stuck where?Diving lava tubesFavorite diving destinationsDeeplyDesigns.comC2G2Productions.com *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualified purchases Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD055 : Cathryn Castle Garcia & Capt. Gui Garcia appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Margo Peyton – Legendary Kids & Family Diving Pro In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with kids and family diving legend Margo Peyton. Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today. If you’re a parent or grandparent and you’re a diver, today’s guest is really gonna inspire you in how to dive as a family. Bio A pioneer in the family dive training and travel market Margo Peyton is a leader in this field. As the owner and founder of Family Dive Adventures & Kids Sea Camp and (501c) Ocean Wishes, Peyton’s efforts to connect and educate families through diving around the world has done much to help grow the diving industry. Since its inception in 2000, Kids Sea Camp is responsible for more than 7,000 youth diver certifications including some high functioning special needs adults and children. With 24 weeks a year, spanning 13 countries, it’s common to have 3 generations of divers on any given week. Her mission is to help families to disconnect from their virtual worlds and reconnect with each other through diving and travel. Margo is a member of the Women Diver Hall of Fame, and the Family Travel Association’s (FTA) board of advisors and was initially the sole representative for the diving industry. She is also a PADI Amasadiver and member of the PADI Youth Advisory Committee. She is recognized as an industry authority on youth diver education. Nearly every industry dive publication seeks Peyton’s expertise for family travel and youth-related articles, including DAN, Sport Diver, Diver UK, Scuba Diving, Dive News Group, Undersea Journal, Diver and Dive Training. Margo has also won 2019 Beneath The Sea Diver of the year, 2018 DEMA Reaching Out Award, two very prestigious awards in the diving industry. Peyton also works to make a difference by providing scholarships, training grants, and internships for the next generation of divers. She financially contributes to and sponsors a variety of conservation programs that address issues like marine habitat conservation and shark protection. Peyton inspires people of all ages and has been instrumental in growing the dive industry by inspiring younger generations and their families. Items In This Podcast Growing up with a father fishermanSingle mom raising two diversA lesson learned about feeding marine lifeGetting over fearsFavorite dive destinationsFamilyDivers.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD054 : Margo Peyton appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Paul Toomer – Legendary Technical Diving Instructor In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with technical diving legend Paul Toomer. Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today. Today’s guest is one of the most stand out, iconic figures in our industry. Paul Toomer looks more like a rockstar than an accomplished technical diving instructor trainer. His wit and his fun-loving nature are balanced by his dedication to his craft. Bio Paul is the President of training agency RAID, he is a working instructor trainer and expedition diver. After living in South Africa for 23 years it’s odd that Paul discovered diving in the cold waters of Southern England. It is this kind of behavior that defines Paul and his passion for doing things differently. Within months of learning to dive he had his own center in London and rapidly progressed to Course Director before finding his passion for technical diving in 2002. Paul is an avid wreck, cave, sidemount and rebreather diver. In 2002 Paul began pursuing his technical diving interests and rebreather diving became his main focus. In 2007, he decided to concentrate purely on technical diver training and expeditions, and Diving Matrix Tec Lab was born. Tec Lab was innovative in its design and philosophy and set the benchmark for advanced diver training. In 2011 Paul was offered the position as Director of Technical Training for SSI (Scuba Schools International) and was responsible for writing diver and instructor manuals and training standards as well as training future technical instructors and trainers. In 2014 Paul became a co-owner of RAID International. Initially he held the position of Training Director but in 2019 he accepted the position as President for the company. Paul has dived wrecks and caves all over the world and also safely planned and executed many deep ocean wreck dives. He has participated in multiple expeditions including the HMS Hampshire, Vanguard and Royal Oak in Scapa Flow. In Malta and Italy, he has worked on ancient Italian and Phoenician amphora wrecks and has participated in exploratory dives on the Polish destroyer L-72, the British submarine HMS Olympus, an American WWII B-24 bomber, and many others. Paul regularly contributes to various dive magazines including Submerged, Diver, Sport Diver and Tanked Up. He has worked with Film and TV Companies as a diver, supplier and advisor. He has given many diving related presentations at training agency member events, OZTek, DEMA, TekDive USA, BalticTech, ADEX, EuroTek, TekCamp, the British Scuba Industry Trade Association, the London International Dive Show and global dealer Seminars. A little boy called Sebastian, motorcycles, tattoos and playing drums are the other major influences in Paul’s life. Items In This Podcast BSAC dive trainingFrom terrified of marine animals to dive proOpened a dive shop the week he became a scuba instructorWorst PADI Course Director application in historyWorking for SSIWorking for RAIDGetting through COVIDThe DEMA hotel barSardine run excitementFlooded rebreather loop at 110 metersPanic diver at 100 metersPee valve practical joke Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD053 : Paul Toomer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Jarrod Jablonski – Legendary Technical Diving Instructor In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with technical diving legend Jarrod Jablonski. Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today. If you’re a diver and you’re on social media, then I’m sure you’ve heard about Deep Dive Dubai. Yep, the largest indoor diving pool in the world. That name doesn’t even do it justice, the most EPIC indoor dive site in the world is actually more accurate. Folks this is designed as a flooded sunken city sinkhole that is – are you ready for this 60 meters or 196 feet deep. It is awesome! Well today we talk with Deep Dive Dubai’s director Jarrod Jablonski about this new project he’s been working on. But also, JJ is the founder and CEO of Global Underwater Explorers aka GUE, and of Halcyon Diving Equipment and Extreme Exposure. Bio Jarrod Jablonski is the founder of GUE and chairman of the board. JJ is an avid explorer, researcher, author, and instructor who teaches and dives in oceans and caves around the world. Trained as a geologist, Jarrod is the founder and president of GUE and CEO of Halcyon and Extreme Exposure while remaining active in conservation, exploration, and filming projects worldwide. His explorations regularly place him in the most remote locations in the world, including several world record excursions at 300ft to cave penetrations in excess of 24,000feet/7km; these dives include bottom times of 12 hours with total immersions near 30 hours. Jarrod is also an author with dozens of publications, including three books and several forthcoming. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing JJ since he was a college student just learning about cave diving, and it is such a treat to see all that he’s accomplished all these years. You’re going to love this interview, especially if you’re a technical diver. Items In This Podcast Global Underwater ExplorersHalcyon ManufacturingExtreme ExposureUniversity of Florida Academic Diving ProgramGinnie SpringsWoodville Karst Plains ProjectDeep Dive Dubai Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD052 : Jarrod Jablonski appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals James Blackman – Founder & Host of Divers Ready! In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with founder and host of Divers Ready! YouTube channel. Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today. Okay, when we want to learn something quick – like a tip or some good advice, how many of you YouTube it? I certainly do. And when it comes to diving, one of the hottest, and in my opinion, best of the YouTubers in diving is today’s guest James Blackman. Check this out James’ YouTube channel is called Diver’s Ready and it at the time of this recording has over 47,000 subscribers! And one of his episodes on the future of diving has over 900,000 views! That’s huge! James and I live just a short drive from each other so he had me on his My Dive Buddies Episode #2 where we drank beer and had a great conversation about diving. And so here in this episode I returned the favor, and again we are drinking beer at the Funky Buddha Brewery in Fort Lauderdale and having fun with him telling dive stories. Hmmm. There might be a pattern here, beer and diving stories. Here’s a bit about James Blackman: Bio With a career in diving spanning twenty years, James has seen a thing or two in the dive industry. James grew up on the Southwest coast of Britain and learned to dive in the frigid waters of the English Channel. If your first dives were like being placed in a cocktail shaker full of cabbage soup and you come away with a love for the sport, then you know it’s going to be a life-long pursuit. James spent his twenties in the British merchant marine which afforded him the opportunity to travel to and dive in far flung locales… 177 countries and counting. Between stints onboard a variety of vessels, James used his shore leaves to level up his scuba training… Rescue diver in Tanzania, DM in Indonesia, Instructor in Honduras, Tec Instructor in the French West Indies. His last ship before moving to a shore-based life style was an expedition ship where he notched up some of his most impressive dives, including briefly holding the world record for most northerly scuba dive… 82 degrees north in the Russian arctic; diving the Amazon river; the Antarctic; and virgin reef systems in Papua New Guinea and Melanesia. Moving ashore in his early thirties, James took on the role of General Manager for a luxury dive operator in St Martin and never had a dull moment! Hollywood visited the island and called upon James’ underwater skills for on-set safety. When Cat-3 hurricane Gonzalo devastated the area, James switched hats to salvage and public safety diver to help with the recovery. Scuba Diving has given so much to James in his life… and first on that list is his brilliant wife Karina whom he met while teaching her AOW class! Yes, that old cliché! James and Karina are also business partners and co-owners of two power-house scuba brands. Miami Technical Diving has become the premiere scuba training facility in South Florida. Tired of seeing other dive shops compete in a ‘race to the bottom,’ James decided his model for teaching scuba would focus on keeping the quality as high as possible; using the best gear possible; teaching beyond the minimum standards on a 1-to-1 student-to-instructor ratio. The fullness of the MTD training calendar shows that people – student divers – will pay more for quality tuition. James is the personality and knowledge broker behind ‘Divers Ready!’ a super influential Scuba Diving YouTube channel, website and brand. In its first year, Divers Ready! was the fastest growing You Tube channel in the Scuba Diving niche, and now has over 47 000 subscribers. Their weekly videos range from Mouthpiece Mondays – where James shares his insider knowledge and opinions about controversial topics in the dive industry – to practical ‘hints & tutorial’ style videos, all with one simple goal in mind – to make you a better diver! James and Karina started small group luxury dive trips for the Divers Ready! audience. The 2021 line up includes Truk Lagoon, Palau, the Sardine Run in South Africa, Roatan and Curacao. James and Karina live in Miami, FL with their rambunctious Husky; Ziggy and their two Maine Coon cats; Thumper and Foxy who remain unimpressed. Items In This Podcast Learning to dive in the BSAC club modelTruk LagoonCaught in a down currentThe mystery of whale sharks Tec Clark in the Divers Ready Studio!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YCSmSHI6Lc Divers Ready Travel Offerings: https://www.diversready.com/travel.html Epic Sardine Run Adventure!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmPcSGpuzl0 YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/diversready?sub_confirmation=1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/diversready Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diversready/ Divers Ready Swag Shop: https://teespring.com/stores/divers-ready-3 Miami Technical Diving: www.miamitechnicaldiving.com <http://www.miamitechnicaldiving.com>  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MiamiTechnicalDiving Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miamitechnicaldiving/ Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD051 : James Blackman appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Wayne Brown – Liveaboards Icon In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary philanthropist and industry liveaboards icon Wayne Brown. Bio Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s so great to have you here with me today on the momentous occasion. It’s the 50th episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers Podcast. That means we have had 50 of the diving world’s top legends. And just as the show was originated imagine you were sitting down having a beverage with these legends and they were just telling you their diving history and stories and throwing in a tip or two. The inspiration for this show was Bob Croft. I had the pleasure of being his roommate at the Pacific Cup of Freediving in 2004. And every night, over copious amounts of Scotch he told story after story of his Navy diving days and the early days of freediving records in the 1960’s. I was amazed. So, Bob Croft became episode one of The League of Extraordinary Divers and that’s what we’ve been doing for 50 episodes and it could not be possible without today’s guest, that’s why Ive reserved this 50th episode for him. Wayne Brown’s passion for adventure can be traced back throughout his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Whether as a member of the U.S. Air Force or as a boy growing up on a small farm in an even smaller town in Florida, Wayne has thrived off an experience-driven lifestyle. Upon being honorably discharged from the USAF, Wayne went to work at Taco Bell Corporate and eventually worked his way up to owning more than 60 Taco Bells. Wayne has always been an enthusiast of service-oriented businesses and after two trips as a customer on Aggressor Fleet, he was hooked on Liveaboard diving and the company’s commitment to service. Wayne purchased Aggressor Fleet from the Haines family in April of 2007 and subsequently purchased the next largest fleet, Dancer Fleet, in March of 2008. Expanding the scuba diving business each year, he rebranded the company to Aggressor Adventures in 2018 when he added River Cruises and Safari Lodges to the offerings. Aggressor Adventures has become the largest adventure travel company in the world offering 5-star adventures and has earned its spot on prestigious lists such as the Inc. 5000, 5 Telly Awards, recognized with multiple Magellan awards and SCUBA Diving Readers Choice Awards. Despite his demanding schedule, Wayne is still an avid adventurer and makes it his mission to travel the world with his customers. He has earned prestigious distinctions as a Platinum Pro 5000 Diver, Nikon Professional Services Member and SSI Instructor Trainer and a PADI Staff Instructor. When he’s not traveling or diving, Wayne is in Augusta, Georgia spending time with his family. Items In This Podcast Learning diving with his sonBuying Aggressor LiveaboardsChanging a culture and selecting yachtsDiscovering locations around the worldSawfish encounterCleaner shrimp encounterSea of Change FoundationInspired By Adventure Podcast Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD050 : Wayne Brown appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Amos Nachoum – Underwater Big Animal Photographer In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary underwater big animal photographer Amos Nachoum. Bio You have seen the images of today’s legend in one way or another, because his images of big and or dangerous underwater animals have graced printed works from diving magazines to advertising agencies. Amos Nachoum is a master of photographing with purpose the BEHAVIOR of Big Animals worldwide, the threatened and endangered. He freedives with blue whales off the Eastern Pacific, scuba dives in the Okavango delta with crocodiles and goes face to face with the great white shark. One of only five people ever to swim and photograph Polar bear underwater… More people were on the moon …12. Since 1980, he has explored every significant body of water from the North Pole to Antarctica. Amos’s photographic vision is to raise awareness of ocean giants in their habitats. His images reflect respect and compassion for animals and wilderness. His photographs strive to dispel the myth of “dangerous” wildlife and show harmonious interactions between man and animal. Also, Amos is an explorer. He leads wildlife photography expeditions with his company BigAnimals.com. Amos’s photos and essays have appeared in publications including National Geographic, Time, Life, The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Le Figaro, Terra Sauvage, Airone, Der Spiegel, Unterwasser, Fifty Fathoms and the cover of the Explorers Club Journal, in February 2020. Amos’s photography won the prestigious Nikon contest. Awards He is a two-time winner in the animal behavioral category of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award. In 2012 he placed first in the American Photography Artist competition. In 2014 he shared his vision “There is no demons in the sea” at the prestigious Ted Talk to a standing ovation. Amos won in 2018, First place at the SIPA award, animals behavior category. In 2019 he was nominated to be the SeaKeepers man of the year, alongside James Cameron, David Attenborough, Walter Cronkite, Jacques Cousteau and Mikael Gorbachev. The movie “Picture of his Life”, about Amos’s career and ultimate adventure diving with the Polar bear, has been released after ten years in the making, to great review in both Europe and in the USA. Amos lives in Pacific Grove CA, USA. He photographs with Nikon camera, Seacam housing and strobes. His cinema camera is the RED, Monstro and Nauticam housing. Items In This Podcast War photographer1978 Red Sea Trip with cameraStarts liveaboard companyStarts big animal expeditionsPhotography and Fine Art – amosphotography.comBig Animal Expeditions – biganimals.com“Picture of His Life” Film Trailer Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD049 : Amos Nachoum appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Dick Long – Diving Industry Veteran & Exposure Protection Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with thermal protection legend Dick Long. Bio If you’ve ever worn a wetsuit or drysuit – and most of you have – then you can thank today’s legend for the improved designs of thermal insulation on your dives! Dick Long is the Founder, owner and chairman of the board, of Diving Unlimited International, Inc, San Diego, CA DUI is currently considered the leader in drysuit design, manufacturing, dive procedures and buoyancy control. Dick Began diving in 1958. Became a diving instructor in 1960 – NAUI #49. After that he became certified as PADI and YMCA instructor. He worked as a contract diver with the U.S. Navy in the Arctic in 1965 and was an equipment designer for Sea Lab II; worked on early saturation dives. Dick participated in the first dives to over 1000 feet and eventually open sea, working dives to 1400 feet. He lectures and writes extensively for recreational publications and retail shows. Dick started his own diving equipment business in 1959 and started developing wetsuits which ultimately became dry suits in the early 1980s. In 1965 developed the hot water suit which is in use to this day. Dick has served major marketplaces including the Military, Search and Rescue and Scientific, Recreational diver and Commercial/Industrial markets. Equipment Development And when it comes to equipment development, he has developed helmets, gas manifold systems, backpack harnesses, weight and trim systems, buoyancy control systems, zip seals, breathing bag assemblies, and various thermal protection equipment, bell survival systems, rebreather systems, a to-fro CO2 scrubber system, wide variety of thermal support equipment Patents Dick had developed an amazing 12 patents including: Air Inlet Valve for Underwater Diver’s Dry SuitLow Friction means to Facilitate Putting on an Underwater SuitUnderwater Diver’s Drysuit & Method of Sealing (Seam Sealing)Easy Access Underwater Diving SuitMethod of Treating an Underwater Diver’s DrysuitNonreturn Hot Water Diving SuitMethod of Forming Crushed FoamHot Water SuitHot Water SystemBreathing Gas HeaterWeight and Trim SystemBuoyancy Compensator Awards 1965 – U.S. Navy Superior Accomplishment Award1991 – NOGI award for education1994 – NAUI Lenny Greenstone award for safety1994 – L.A. County Underwater Instructors’ Assn. – honoree for diving safety and education1995 – Diver of the Year award from Beneath the Sea Show1996 – DAN Diver of the Year Award1997 – California Scuba Service Award2000 – NAUI Hall of Fame2003 – Diver of the Year, Our World Underwater2004 – DEMA Reaching Out Award for lifetime achievement2016 – California Divers Hall of Fame2017- NAUI life time achievement award Author of Training and Educational Material DrySuit Diving – Book Board of Advisors Historical Diving Society USAIANTD – Int’l Association of Nitrox and Tech DiversFlorida Institute of TechnologySanta Barbara City College – Commercial Diving SchoolCalifornia Ships to ReefsDiver’s Alert Network (DAN)San Diego Oceans FoundationCalifornia Certified Reef EnhancementDEMA European DevelopmentDEMA Board – Education CommitteeScuba Diving Resource GroupAnd many others Of his many diving organization professional membership, Dick is also a fellow in The Explorers Club Items In This Podcast Began diving in California when there were no scuba training agenciesStarted his first diving business in 1959Went through the first NAUI Instructor course in Texas in 1960Worked on Sea Lab II projectHelping the US Navy with exposure suit protectionThe first hot water suitChasing black sea bassThe wonderful operations at DUI Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD048 : Dick Long appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Willie Cline – Diving Industry Veteran & Marketing Pro In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with diving industry legend William Cline. Bio William Cline, who goes by Willie, is president and owner of Cline Group Advertising, Marketing & Research. The company was founded in 1990 as an international consultancy, specializing in the recreational scuba diving industry. Willie has been fortunate to represent and consult on a variety of matters from technical consulting, management operations, tourism development and economic impact projects with some of the world’s leading companies, governments and destinations within the scuba diving industry. Past and current clients include The Governments and Tourism boards of:Bonaire, The Bahamas Diving Association, Barbados, Hawaiian Islands Dive Association, Broward County, FL/Greater Ft. Lauderdale Visitors and Convention Bureau, Grenada Other private-sector clients include Divers Alert Network (DAN), Rodale Press, Bob Soto’s in Cayman, Dive Provo in Turks & Caicos, Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas, Peter Hughes Dive Liveaboards, Sand Dollar Dive Resort in Bonaire, the Cayman Islands Watersports, Hotel and Restaurant Associations, DeepBlu.com, Fort Young Hotel Dominica, Explorer Ventures Dive Liveaboards, and DEMA, the diving industry trade association, among others. Willie has also recently served as the past Vice-Chairman of the DEMA Board of Directors and currently serving as the Chair of DEMA’s Research Committee as well as committee member of DEMA’s Consumer Marketing committee. Cline Group is highly respected in the specialized field of scuba diving consulting, operations, and marketing, within the USA, Europe, South America and Asia. Willie Cline and his company are the only diving industry marketing entity to be recognized as a dive business experts by The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Entrepreneur magazines, and numerous newspapers including the Orange County Register (CA). Diving press includes interviews/articles in Dive Training, Scuba Diving, Sport Diver, PADI’s Undersea Journal, Dive Center Business Magazine, and Skin Diver magazines to name a few. Willie Cline, founder and president, is a diving veteran, with over 5,000 dives, holds an active PADI Course Director certification, and currently working on his MBA. William is also passionate about flying and holds a private pilot’s license and lives on a small airport in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Items In This Podcast Learning to dive at an early ageCalifornia to FloridaPro Dive’s Early DaysFort Lauderdale Reef Named After Him – Willie’s WayLosing a WreckHis Dive Buddy Stuffed His BCD Pockets with Food to Attract SharksCline GroupOh Captain, My Captain by Jean Michel Cousteau Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD047 : William Cline appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Dawn Kernagis – Extreme Environment & Technical Diving Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary extreme environment expert Dawn Kernagis. Bio Dawn Kernagis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where she studies ways to protect the brain and nervous system of individuals who will be exposed to high physiological stress, from divers and astronauts to patients undergoing surgery or radiation. Her current research is funded by federal agencies including the US Navy and NASA. Dawn completed her Ph.D. and postdoctoral training at Duke University. She completed her Ph.D. as ONR Undersea Medicine’s first Predoctoral Award recipient. As a graduate student, Dawn also assisted with numerous DoD and NASA-funded projects focused on extreme environmental physiology. In 2016, Dawn was selected as a crew member of the NASA NEEMO XXI undersea mission. Based on her background in underwater exploration, including a team member of the Woodville Karst Plain Project for over a decade, and her diving medicine research, Dawn was inducted as a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame and as a Fellow of the Explorers Club. Outside of research, she is a co-host of a science and technology podcast, STEM-Talk. Also, Dawn is a board member of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for POW Health, and the Duskin & Stephens Foundation, a non-profit focused on health and family support for Special Operations military personnel. Items In This Podcast Certified at 15Wookville Karst Plain Project (WKPP)UNC Chapel HillNASA’s NEEMO21IHHC Speech about NEEMO21Stem Talk Podcast Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD046 : Dawn Kernagis – Extreme Environment Legend appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Lamar Hires – Cave Diving Pioneer, Explorer and Manufacturer In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary cave diving explorer and manufacturer Lamar Hires. Early Days Lamar Hires started diving in 1979 after moving to Jacksonville, FL. The springs of North Florida were the closest dive sites to Jacksonville that didn’t require getting on a boat. After diving all of the springs countless times, he was naturally drawn to the caves. He earned his NAUI open water instructor rating in August 1984. And in November 1984, after cave diving for five years and logging over 1000 dives, he earned his cave instructor rating with the NSS-CDS. He has gone on to explore and map many cave systems in North Florida and around the world with a small group of dive buddies. The motivation to explore and challenge himself led to the design of many new Dive Rite products and diving styles. Lamar was one of the first to use sidemount techniques to push caves beyond the range of back mounted cylinders. In 1985 he used this knowledge and experience to write the first sidemount specialty program for cave divers for the NSS-CDS. Over the years Lamar has tested and experimented with various cylinder configurations to evolve sidemount diving into the specialty that it has become. Exploration He has tested gear and explored caves and wrecks around the world, including caves/mines in Finland, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Australia, Japan, Italy, Russia, and numerous sites in the USA. He was part of the team that connected Telford Springs and Luraville Springs, two cave systems in North Florida. This dive set a short-lived world record for sidemount traverse in 1989, with a distance of 7600 ft. He has been in the icebergs of Antarctica and under the ice in sub-freezing water temperatures. He also dives plenty of wrecks, having been on wrecks in the Dry Tortugas, Egypt, Israel, UAE, Norway, Antarctica, and the Great Lakes. Lamar is passionate about cave rescue and recovery. He has traveled around the world for the International Cave Rescue/Recovery team, training divers for this specialty, including Australian and Italian teams. Lamar is still a very active instructor. He has trained more than 650 people to cave dive since 1984, and continues to train rebreather, sidemount, cave, and other technical divers. Dive Rite After joining Dive Rite in 1984, he developed the first back mounted wing specifically for diving heavy double cylinders that would later become known as the Classic Wing. An updated version of the Classic Wing continues to be a popular wing today. He brought the backplate that is widely used by technical divers into mass production in 1984. He also worked with SEIKO EPSON to develop the first user programmable nitrox computer, the “Bridge”, in 1992. After being with the company from the start, in 1997 Lamar bought Dive Rite from his friend and co-founder Mark Leonard. Lamar continues to actively dive in caves and wrecks around the world. This provides the inspiration for developing and improving the Dive Rite product line by testing it in any environment imaginable. Items In This Podcast Inspired by Sea HuntUsed Ned Deloach’s Underwater FloridaWes SkilesWoody JasperLloyd BaileyRescue 911 Show – Cave RescueCave Rescues and RecoveriesThe invention of the Classic WingThe invention of Sidemount diving for US cave systemsMapping 14 cave systemsDive Rite ManufacturingNSS-CDS Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD045 : Lamar Hires – Cave Diving Pioneer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Rosemary Lunn – Diving Industry Author and Marketing Expert Today’s legend hails from the UK and she surely has a grasp on not only diving in the UK but also being a dive professional there as well. Rosemary E Lunn (Roz) is the Business Development Director at The Underwater Marketing Company. This British firm specializes in providing marketing, communications, social media and event management for the Recreational and Technical Diving Industry. Born in Essex, England Rosemary fulfilled her long-held desire to learn to scuba dive in 1992, after being left a legacy by her late Grandfather. She spent every moment she could exploring Britain’s magnificent coastal waters and wrecks. In what was to be a pivotal moment in 1996 she was handed a copy of aquaCORPS magazine, and she was soon planning her underwater excursions with a different mindset and discipline utilizing Nitrox and twinsets. By 1997 Rosemary turned Pro and proudly achieved her PADI Instructor rating. She taught for a season in Turkey before turning her hand to diving journalism. Her articles in Dive Girl opened doors at 9>90, a British technical diving magazine. After a spell with DrägerDive, (Dräger Ray European Tour staff), Roz was headhunted to open a dive centre on the English South Coast. Two years later, the warmer waters of the Red Sea and a Dive Guide / Instructor job beckoned, enticing her to teach in Egypt. Rosemary has worked as a professional instructor / dive guide, on History Channel and National Geographic documentaries, modeled underwater for training agency shots, as a safety diver for underwater shoots, and scuba relayed the English Channel for charity. She has trained an OWUSS Rolex Scholar to dive. In Sept 2003 Rosemary worked on Carl Spencer’s HMHS Britannic expedition and saw the industry needed specialist PR support. Thus TUMC was born. She has worked with most of the major diving agencies, and blue chip brands including Dive Rite, Fourth Element and Poseidon. From a young age Rosemary was brought up to recycle and respect the environment, hence she is the catalyst behind Fourth Element’s Ocean Positive range. Roz teamed up again with the late Carl Spencer (and Leigh Bishop) in 2008, when the three Brits founded EUROTEK. She has subsequently organized the last six events; Rosemary was responsible for organizing this century’s most significant CCR symposium to date – Rebreather Forum 3 – on behalf of the AAUS, DAN and PADI. In 2014 she established TEKDiveUSA. Rosemary E Lunn is a respected, prolific diving author, and a staff writer for X-Ray Mag. She is an Associate Member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, a SSI Platinum Diver, and takes an active role in the diving industry. She sits on the SITA Board (Scuba Industry Trade Association), and the British Diving Safety Group. Items In This Podcast Eating cheese sandwiches to save up for divingTouring Rebreather Demo’sWreck of Mary RoseDiving Scapa FlowRosemary’s Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/tumc.co.ukTwitter Roz_UWMarketingInstagram MsRozLunnXray Magazine http://www.xray-mag.comThe Underwater Marketing Company http://www.tumc.co.ukKyarra Wreck Turns 100 Years Old | X-Ray Mag (xray-mag.com) https://xray-mag.com/content/kyarra-wreck-turns-100-years-oldScapa 100: Centenary Anniversary Event | X-Ray Mag (xray-mag.com) https://xray-mag.com/content/scapa-100-centenary-anniversary-eventHSE – Diving: How we work https://www.hse.gov.uk/diving/how.htm Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD044 : Rosemary Lunn – Diving Industry Author appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Bob Talbot – Iconic Nature Photographer & Underwater Filmmaker As always, today we have another legend in the diving industry – actually he’s a legend in photography and film industries as well. I’m talking about the one and only Bob Talbot. It’s always a treat to interview these legends, but Bob is really special for me because I had his prints in my room before I ever became a dive professional. I have always loved his work and that’s why I still have three of his prints to this day! Bob was drawn to the sea as a child. He got his first glimpse beneath the surface when he was eight years old and began diving when he was 13. A year later he was given a Nikono‘s camera as a gift and his creative fuse was lit. His iconic photographs were first published as fine Art lithographs when he was in his early 20s and soon became the best selling line of marine artwork in the world. His images have also appeared in a wide range of publications from Time magazine to National Geographic. At the age of 19 Bob began shooting motion picture film with a wind up Bowlex 16 mm camera. Since then his motion picture work has been featured in television productions that have taken him from Antarctica with his childhood hero Jacques Cousteau, to the arctic seal hunting grounds with Paul Watson, from the caverns of Grand Cayman with David Blaine to his beloved Monterey Bay for the BBC/PBS production of Big Blue Live. Bobs feature film credits include Free Willy, Flipper, Into the Blue and Dolphin Tale Two. He directed and photographed the award-winning IMAX film Ocean Men Extreme Dive and acted as a director and cinematographer for sequences in the Academy award nominated IMAX film Dolphins. He recently completed work on his production Being Dolphin 4D and is currently working on his featured documentary film Fin. Bob specializes in creating unique, highly immersive special venue media that speaks to his mission of connecting people to the sea. His clients include IMAX, Simex Iwerks, California Academy of Sciences, Smithsonian Institution, California Science Center, the National Aquarium and National Marine Sanctuaries. For his advocacy work Bob has been presented with the environmental hero award by vice president Al Gore, the prestigious Sea Keeper award by HSH Prince Albert of Monaco, and the Ark Trust Genesis award. He has served on the boards of the American Ocean Campaign, Earth Communications Office and on the board of governors for Oceana. He served nearly a decade on the board of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and was chairman of the board of trustees of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation from 2008 through 2016 When asked why he is so passionate about ocean conservation Bob’s answer is simple, “the sea has given us life, it’s time we returned the favor.” Items In This Podcast Nikonos camera at age 14Early photographs and filmsEncounter with Gray WhaleOceanmen filming goes wrongBeing connectedLanding on a sharkHow to be an ocean ambassadortalbotoceangallery.comtalbotfilms.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 043 : Bob Talbot – Nature Cinematographer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Faith Ortins – Legendary Underwater Explorer Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to have you here today. Today we have an absolutely remarkable guest. Today I have a fun interview with diving legend Faith Ortins. Faith has spent most of her adult life in the ocean. Starting as ascientific diver and volunteering for public safety diving operations in the1980’s, Faith became a technical diver and divemaster and has thousands ofdives over her 42 year diving career. She worked with DUI to develop some of the first women’s drysuits while still a dive store owner in the early 90’s. As VP of sales for DUI, she created the DUI DEMOTOUR, which promoted local diving while allowing divers to test dive DUI products, and the DIVEOPS program which promotes education about the risks of diving in contaminated water. She has led expeditions around the world- many to the most remote places on Earth including multiple expeditions to both poles. Recently, she co-founded Blue Green Expeditions and now runs expeditions full time as she continues to share her passion for diving with divers from around the world. A frequent presenter at dive shows and conferences, she is a 2010 inductee into the Women Divers Hall of Fame and a member of the Boston Sea Rovers. Items In This Podcast First scuba class in Massachusetts 1979Public safety divingTeaching underprivileged youth to diveDiving both polesFinding a 200 year old cannon while divingStellar Sea Lions, Wolf Eels, Leopard Seals and Giant Pacific OctopusBlue Green Expeditions Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 042 : Faith Ortins – Underwater Explorer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Ian Koblick – Legendary Aquanaut & Ocean Educator Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to have you here today. Have you ever fantasized about living underwater. Of course you have! I do too. You see these images have been set in our mind mostly through television and movies – James Bond movies like Moonraker, SeaLab 2020 cartoon, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Jacques Cousteau. Well today’s guest was one of the first aquanauts – those who not only worked underwater, but they lived underwater. Ian Koblick has pioneered ocean exploration since the 1960’s, and for the past five decades has developed built and operated ocean and environmental education and research facilities in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Florida. He operated and managed for 3 years a 150foot research vessels which was donated to his research and education Foundation. La Chalupa He was one of the nation’s first aquanauts, after serving as manager and aquanaut in the Tektite undersea programs. In 1972 he designed and operated, “La Chalupa”, the most advanced undersea lab in the world. He and a partner converted it to Jules’ Undersea Lodge, the world’s only undersea hotel, operating since 1986 at the Marine Resources Development Foundation environmental education center in Key Largo, Florida. The Foundation houses and educates more than 4,000 students a year for the past 35 years. Ian created the foundation and has served as president for 50 years. Ian is a recognized authority on marine resource planning and has consulted on an international level in Japan, Panama, Vietnam, Brazil, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Malta, Italy, Sicily, Croatia, Spain and served the Governor of the Virgin Islands for two years as Special Assistant for Undersea Programs. He co-authored, Living and Working in the Sea, a book on the history of saturation diving and underwater habitats. He was a Consulting Editor of the 2nd edition of the NOAA Diving Manual. Ian is a founding Director of Aurora Trust Foundation, which was formed to advance the world’s understanding of the ocean environment, and its marine cultural heritage He managed and operated its 85 foot research vessel in the Mediterranean, and co-founded Deep Blue Surveys, a commercial marine company that operated a full suite of remote survey instruments, integrated navigation, and data collection software from its survey vessel based in Malta. Items In This Podcast First scuba dives in CaliforniaSpecimens were collected on scuba, but frowned by scientistsTraining at the Naval Experimental Diving UnitTektite missionsLa Chalupa underwater habitatA rebreather goes wrongMarine LabJules’ Undersea LodgePrinul50Marine Resources Development FoundationAurora Trust Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 041 : Ian Koblick – Legendary Aquanaut appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Howard & Michele Hall – Legendary Award Winning Underwater Filmmaking Duo Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to have you here today. Have you ever been to an IMAX movie? IMAX redefines the phrase big screen films. Well I vividly remember seeing Deep Sea 3D IMAX film, I was stunned at the beauty on the massive screen. It was truly an experience to watch. Well it turns out that movie along with multiple other IMAX and made for tv movies were all filmed by a husband and wife duo none other than Howard and Michele Hall. Howard and Michele Hall are wildlife filmmakers who specialize in marine wildlife films. Working as a team, Howard and Michele have produced and directed many television films including a National Geographic Special, three episodes of the PBS series Nature and the five-hour PBS series Secrets of the Ocean Realm. In addition to winning the Best of Show at Wildscreen 1990, The Festival Choice Award at Jackson Hole in 1991 and Best Cinematography in 1993, the Hall’s television work has resulted in seven Emmy Awards. IMAX The Halls are perhaps best known for their underwater IMAX® films. In 1994 Howard directed the first-ever underwater IMAX 3D feature, Into the Deep, and in 1998 he directed and Michele produced the IMAX film Island of the Sharks. They returned to the IMAX 3D format in 2005 when Michele produced and Howard directed the Warner Bros./IMAX feature Deep Sea 3D. The award-winning sequel Under the Sea 3D followed in 2009. Of the five highest grossing 3D films produced by IMAX Corporation, two were directed by Howard. The box office receipts for the IMAX films they’ve produced and directed exceed $200million. Howard and Michele have participated in many other underwater IMAX productions in various capacities, including MacGillivray Freeman Films’ IMAX film Coral Reef Adventure, Journey to the South Pacific and Humpback Whales. They are currently in production on two films. One is an IMAX film, Secrets of the Sea. The release has been delayed due to Covid-19, and is now scheduled for 2022. The second is a feature-length documentary, which they expect will be available on a streaming venue in 2021. Accolades The Halls strive to make family-friendly films that raise awareness of and increase appreciation for the marine environment. During the past 30 years, the films they have produced have been seen by thousands of children and adults. They consistently receive feedback in letters, emails and in person from many who have said that not only have their films increased their knowledge of the marine environment, but they have also been the inspiration to turn career choices toward marine sciences and / or environmental issues. Howard is a member of the Directors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Michele is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Women Divers Hall of Fame. The various awards they’ve received include being inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, and being named as honorees of the Hans Hass Award. Both are recipients of the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences’ NOGI Award. Items In This Podcast They met at a dive shop in California, Michele was Howard’s studentHoward started on the set of The Deep motion pictureThe first PBS specialsAttempting the first ever underwater IMAX film camera scenes – with a 345 pound camera!Favorite diving locationsLifesaving measures for a diver… who was going to the bathroomHelping a Manta Ray has a major reward – Girl of the Sea of Cortez inspirationTips for diversWomen Divers Hall of Fame ScholarshipsHoward and Michele’s website Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 040 : Howard & Michele Hall – Award Winning Underwater Filmmakers appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Richie Kohler – Iconic Wreck Explorer, Filmmaker and Author Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to have you here today. So when you say the name Richie Kohler one may immediately think of wreck diving in the Northeast, or German U boats or his long time buddy John Chatterton, or for many of you the New York Times bestselling book he’s featured in Shadow Divers. Well, that’s because Richie is a key iconic figure in all of those circles. Richie Kohler is a filmmaker, author and explorer whose diving experiences began in the waters surrounding Brooklyn NY, but whose passion for diving and exploring shipwrecks has taken him to all corners of the globe. And, as a founding member of the NY based group the “Atlantic Wreck Divers” Kohler has spent the last 40 years exploring and identifying lost shipwrecks. Those exploits have been documented in newspapers, magazines, documentary films and numerous books. Kohler holds nearly every diving qualification and has certified scores of technical divers in advanced diving techniques and has led shipwreck and technical diving expeditions internationally. In 1992 his work (with diving partner John Chatterton) to identify a previously unknown German U-boat was the focus of an award-winning NOVA documentary, “Hitler’s Lost Sub.” And, that six-year effort was the subject of several television documentaries and a best-selling book, Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson, a New York Times bestseller. The success of that program launched his career in underwater filmmaking. Kohler co-hosted and produced fifty-six episodes of the popular History Channel program “Deep Sea Detectives” that attracted millions of viewers worldwide. The educational program focused on underwater mysteries in nearly every aquatic environment and inspired many to discover diving and explore the undersea world. Kohler has produced numerous other television programs detailing his explorations on some of the most famous shipwrecks in the world, including the Andrea Doria, RMS Titanic, and the HMHS Britannic. Kohler has worked on film projects for Paramount Pictures, CBS, PBS/NOVA, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Universal Studios and most recently Kohler joined legendary underwater explorer Dr. Bob Ballard aboard his research ship, EV Nautilus, documenting deep water shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. Kohler’s work is often focused on the human aspect of shipwreck tragedies and he has prioritized reaching out to the survivors and families answering questions and providing closure on wrecks such as the U-215, U-869, USS Murphy, USS Lagarto and the PC 566. Most recently his work in correcting historical wrongs culminated in an award ceremony at the Pentagon in which the Secretary of the Navy posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit with Valor to a World War II Captain. A Fellow in the Explorer’s Club, Kohler continues to lead expeditions in search of lost ships and the mysteries they hold. Also, he has written dozens of articles about shipwrecks, deep diving and diver safety and in 2016 published his first book, Mystery of the Last Olympian, that details his decade of work on Titanic’s sister ship HMHS Britannic. Recently Kohler hosted on a new series of diving-centered programing, Dark Waters with Richie Kohler. This programing will promote the fragile underwater environment, showcasing the treasures it holds to a new generation of underwater explorers. Richie Kohler represents a unique sector of diving professionals with significant contributions to exploration and historical preservation of the ocean’s wreck resources. Items In This Podcast Growing up in New York with a father who fishedRetrieving a clock from a shipwreck started his passionThe great New York Mudhole divingThe accounts of Shadow DiversDiving the Andrea DoriaDiscovering the German U-Boat U-869Meeting families in Germany of sailors from U-869Stuck in BritannicTips for diversWho will play Richie in the Shadow Divers movie?Richie’s website Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 039 : Richie Kohler – Shipwreck Explorer, Filmmaker and Author appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Cathy Church – Underwater Photography Pioneer and Educator Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to have you here today. Back in the early eighties is when I got certified and my favorite magazine was Skin Diver magazine. Today’s guest was photo editor for Skin Diver magazine and it was many of her photos and articles that fueled me on as a new diver. And that is the one and only Cathy Church. As a child, Cathy was an avid biologist and bird watcher. She earned a BS in biology from the University of Michigan where she learned to SCUBA dive. She was studying marine biology at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine biology station in Monterey, California when she met Jim Church, a scuba diver who was pioneering underwater photography and writing for Skin Diver Magazine in the early 60s. Cathy wanted to document her underwater work and spent many dives with Jim exploring ways to use the Calypso camera and flashbulb systems with homemade accessories. She earned an MS in Marine biology at the University of Hawaii but in the late 1960s, she was not able to break the barricades against women divers and she quit pursuing a career as a scientist and turned to two other activities—underwater photography and teaching 7th and 8th grade science in California. She quickly became recognized as one of the world’s foremost teachers and authors on underwater photography. Cathy was a photo editor for Skin Diver magazine for 15 years, coauthored hundreds of magazine articles and four books on underwater photo techniques, and offered seminars throughout the USA. Her first week-long photo courses were taught in Grand Cayman in 1972. She is well known for many styles of photography from advertising, documentary and editorial to fantasy images for her gallery. For fourteen years she produced limited edition fine art black and white silver gelatin prints. Her coffee table book “My Underwater Photo Journey” was published in 2004. Cathy is still creating new styles to her photography, from imagination to humor to creations with Photoshop. Her latest assignment was to produce an environmental portrait underwater of screenwriter J.V.Hart for a How-to book “Environmental Portraiture” by Jim Cornfield. This required numerous trials and ideas, and a completely different approach to finally capture Hart’s personality and not just another diver in a lovely scene. Cathy’s enthusiasm when she teaches and her kindness toward her students have won her accolades from divers around the world. She encourages people through her writing, her seminars and her classes to enjoy the wonders of the undersea environment. She spends many hours successfully coaching people who are fearful of the water on how to become snorkelers and divers. Cathy believes in sharing everything she has learned and she has found many ways to do that. Like most divers she is a dedicated environmentalist and became a vegan to reduce her impact on the over-consumption of ocean sea food and the destruction caused by raising cattle and other farm animals, with the added advantage of keeping her fully healthy at 75. Items In This Podcast Growing up with a biology passionCertified at University of Michigan with the legendary Lee SommersMeeting Jim ChuchBeing photo editor of Skin Diver MagazineAmazing photo assignmentsPhoto classes and photo tripsCathy’s book “My Underwater Photo Journey”Cathy’s website Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 038 : Cathy Church – Underwater Photography Pioneer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Wyland – Artist, Diver, Author, Educator and Explorer Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to have you with us today. Are you like me when you walk along somewhere and you see an underwater image or artwork somewhere that you just pause and go WOW? It for a moment reminds you of that other world you love. You want to escape there. And it almost changes your frame of mind while being on land, and at the same time stirs your thoughts for when your next dive trip is. If that is you, then chances are our guest’s art has made you pause in your tracks and get inspired for the underwater world. Over 40 years ago, marine life artist Wyland exploded on the scene with his rich, majestic murals of marine life. The timing couldn’t have been better – the environmental movement was in full swing and ocean-themed art was in high demand. Today, the art is as vibrant as ever and the message of showcasing the beauty of nature is even stronger. But Wyland’s mission has expanded in entirely new ways. With new art, a new emphasis on families and education, and a broader view of our relationship to the beauty of our entire blue planet – from our oceans, lakes, and rivers, to our streams and wetlands. Wyland has inspired millions of people worldwide about marine life conservation thanks to his life-sized paintings and images ranging from the sides of sports arenas and cruise ships to installations at the U.S. National Mall in Washington, D.C. A multi-faceted artist, scuba diver, author, educator, and explorer, Wyland has hosted several television programs, including, “Wyland’s Ocean World” series on the Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet Network, “Wyland: A Brush With Giants” and “Wyland’s Art Studio,” his acclaimed series for national public television. In a career spanning more than four decades, Wyland’s art and commitment to conservation has made him one of the most influential artists of the 21st Century, with artwork in museums, corporate collections, and private homes in more than one hundred countries. Items In This Podcast How Wyland started painting underwater lifeHead-butting the Dali LamaDiving Antarctica with Dr. Sylvia Earle on her 80th birthdayFriendship with Lloyd BridgesHis best dive everHis worst dive everPainting with Eddie VedderThe Art of Wyland: The World’s Finest Ocean ArtistOcean Artists SocietyWyland’s websiteWyland’s Rum Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 037 : Wyland – Artist, Author, Educator and Explorer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Jennifer Idol – Underwater Conservation Artist, Photographer, Filmmaker and Author Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. It’s great to be with you today. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to dive in all fifty states? Frankly, I’ve got to admit I never have because there are some states where I figured there’s probably not any diving there. But when you think about all the lakes, quarries, rivers, springs, sinkholes, caves, mines and even missile silos – there are plenty of places to submerge underwater and explore in our United States. Well our guest today did just that. Jennifer Idol is the first woman to dive 50 states. Jennifer is an expert in diving, design, and visual storytelling, and she connects people to the natural world so they can experience its wonder through her underwater photography and film. She showcased local waters in her book, An American Immersion, a quest in which she became the first woman to dive 50 states. Her underwater photography and stories have been shared in periodicals such as DIVER, SCUBA Diving, and Alert Diver. Her connection to local waters led to her being recognized as a PADI® Ambassadiver (2017 and 2018) and as a member of the Ocean Artists Society and The Explorer’s Club. Items In This Podcast In college mixing her passion for diving with her skills in photographyAn event that pushed her to be a Rescue Diver and DivemasterDiving 50 statesDiving a missile siloTips for diversStream2SeaDiving with Humpback whalesJennifer’s WebsiteJennifer’s Facebook Page Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 036 : Jennifer Idol – Underwater Conservation Artist appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Michael Menduno – Author, Reporter, Editor of AquaCORPS and Technical Diving Forerunner Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. I’m so glad you’re here today. Have you ever wondered who came up with the name technical diving? Well actually our guest today did. Michael Menduno aka “M2” is an award-winning reporter and technologist who has written about diving and diving technology for more than 30 years. He coined the term “technical diving.” Menduno serves as the editor-in-chief of Global Underwater Explorers InDepth online magazine, is a contributing editor for DAN Europe’s Alert Diver and X-Ray magazine, and writes for DeeperBlue.com. He is also on the board of directors for the Historical Diving Society. Michael founded and served as editor in chief of “aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving (1990-1996), and its sister publication technicalDIVER, which helped usher tech diving into mainstream sports diving. In addition, he produced the first Tek, EUROTek and ASIATek conferences, and organized Rebreather Forums 1.0 and 2.0. His work has also appeared in Alert Diver, AQUA, Asian Diver, Business 2.0, DeeperBlue.com, Discovery, Dive Log Australasia, DIVER, the Journal of Diving History, InDepth, NACD Journal, Outside, Quest, Scientific American, Scuba Times, Sports Diver, Undercurrent, Undersea Journal, WIRED and X-Ray magazines. Michael worked with Capt. Billy Deans to set up the first technical diving training center in Key West, Florida in the early 1990s, which quickly became a Mecca for tech divers from around the world. He has studied and trained with many of the best and brightest in the business. Michael received the OZTEK Media Excellence Award in 2011, the EUROTek Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 and the TEKDive USA Media Award in 2018. Michael earned his open-water certification in 1976, is Full Cave certified (1990, 2018), certified on AP Diving rebreathers and is a member of Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). In addition to diving, Michael is actively involved in U.S. Masters swimming and has been a performing bass player. Items In This Podcast Watching Jaws Before His Checkout DivesEarly Days of Technical TrainingThe Emergence of Enriched Air NitroxTechnical ExpeditionsAquaCORPS MagazineA Humorous Encounter with The Legendary Sheck ExleyAggressive Sharks Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 035 : Michael Menduno – Author, Editor & Technical Diving Forerunner appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Jonathan Bird, Producer, Cinematographer & Host of Jonathan Bird’s Blue World Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the League of Extraordinary Divers. If you’ve been a listener of this podcast then you have heard that I (and many of my guests) grew up watching the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Basically it was an underwater documentary and it has inspired countless divers to be underwater explorers. Well my guest today is doing the same thing with his award-winning underwater series Jonathan Bird’s Blue World. Jonathan Bird is an Emmy award-winning cinematographer specializing in underwater production. He is the host and producer of Jonathan Bird’s Blue World, an Emmy Award-winning educational family-friendly underwater adventure series airing on public television and YouTube, now in its 7th season. Jonathan has shot and directed over 50 films for broadcast and education. His films have appeared all over the world, on networks such as National Geographic Channel, PBS, ABC, USA Network, Discovery and even the SciFi Channel. Jonathan is the president and founder of Oceanic Research Group, Inc., a non-profit environmental organization founded in 1990 to promote conservation of the world’s oceans. He is the author of seven books of underwater photography. He just released his first IMAX film Ancient Caves. And, he’s a really cool guy! Items In This Podcast Pilot Episode for Discovery ChannelNational Geographic Shark DocumentaryEarly Days of YouTubeGetting Into Public TelevisionGuy Harvey at Stingray CityWinning Emmy AwardsCave DivingLife Insurance and divingGetting Narked in GreenlandGallapagos & DominicaTips for DiversBlue World Webisodes Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 034 : Jonathan Bird – Underwater Producer, Cinematographer & Host appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Andy Torbet, Tech Diver, Freediver, Climber, Skydiver, TV Show Host, Stuntman & Author Hailing from the Highlands of Scotland Andy is a professional cave- and tech- diver, freediver, climber and skydiver. As well as leading a number of exploratory expeditions he also performs technical stunts for documentaries and films, has presented 22 TV series on the BBC, CBBC, Discovery US, CH5 and the History Channel. He’s written over 250 articles and one book. After 10 years in the British Forces as a Bomb Disposal Officer and Paratrooper, including a number of operational tours and commanding the Army’s Underwater Bomb Disposal Unit, Andy left to pursue a career in exploration and film-making. This has seen him on adventures around the world including diving the wreck of Britannic, cave diving in Victorian diving equipment, free diving under the Alaskan ice, standing in a 700 degree fireball, free-climbing a 12 story glass building, swim with sharks, cave dive inside icebergs, compete internationally at Speed Skydiving and more. As well as many world first to his name in underwater exploration and his TV and film making career he also works as a professional stuntman, most recently working on the new James Bond film. Items In This Podcast Joined Snorkeling Club as a child in ScotlandLearned to dive at 14Became an Army diver and bomb disposalDiving the highest lakes in Scotland, England and WalesHis TV shows and documentariesDiving the BritannicDiving Hell’s Gate MineDiving Yonaguni MonumentAndy’s TwitterAndy’s InstagramAndy’s Website Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 033 : Andy Torbet – Technical Diver, TV Show Host & Stuntman appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Annie Crawley, Legendary Underwater Producer, Photographer, Author and Speaker Today’s guest is Annie Crawley.  As an award winning producer, photographer, author, and inspirational speaker, Annie photographs, films, and creates programs about our environment focusing on our world underwater. As an adventure traveler and storyteller Annie feels at home with fins on her feet and cameras in hand. She’s a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, and holds her Master of Communications from the University of Washington. Annie runs a scuba diving team in the PNW and is the training columnist for Scuba Diving Magazine. Items In This Podcast Beginning her career solo and abroadThieves open a door for her careerFlashlight fish and the Milky WayEarly underwater photographyDive Into Your Imagination!Annie’s websiteAnnie’s TwitterAnnie’s InstagramAnnie’s iBooksAnnie’s YouTube Channel Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 032 : Annie Crawley – Underwater Producer & Photographer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Phil Short, Legendary Cave and Technical Diver Phil has been diving professionally and exploring for over 26 years and has logged over 7000 dives in caves and open water using both open and closed circuit equipment, with over 3000 hours on Rebreather equipment. He started dry caving at the age of 14 and got into it, rappelling, remote medicine – but in dry caving the cave often comes to a point where its flooded, and unless you cave dive, you’re not going any further. So, Phil took an open water diver course then dozens more courses just to further his cave penetration pursuits. Phil became a scuba instructor, continued cave diving and began developing his Technical Diving skills through. In 1993 he was involved in forming one of the first Trimix wreck diving teams in the UK. Phil is now one of the UK’s foremost IANTD Instructor Trainer Trainers and the Training director of IANTD UK in addition to being a member of the IANTD HQ Board of Advisors. Having devoted all his free time to developing his Technical skills, Phil began to use them for cave diving, his true passion, on expeditions to Mallorca, France, Spain, Canada, Russia, Greece and Mexico. At the same time, he began teaching first open, then closed circuit, technical and cave diving full time. Phil has been involved in film projects for the BBC, Discovery and others. As an educator Phil has trained divers from groups such as the HSE, the BBC, the Police, NOAA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), the Archaeological department of the National Museum of China and the US National Parks Service. For the last five years Phil has been a team diver and Dive Safety Officer for a combined WHOI and Greek Ephorate of Antiquities project to rediscover, survey and excavate the Antikythera Mechanism wreck in Greece. Phil has also been involved in the continuing excavation of Lord Elgin’s Mentor wreck. In 2017 he helped excavate the Tulsamerican B-24 bomber off the island of Vis in Croatia for a joint DPAA/Lund University and USA NPS project. Linked to this move into commercial support for the scientific diving community Phil completed HSE SCUBA training in 2016 along with HSE First Aid at Work and became co director of Dark Water Exploration Ltd. After completion of a 3 month cave exploration project with Bill Stone, where 45 days were spent underground, in 2015 Phil became a member of the Explorers Club and in 2017 was upgraded to a Fellow. In 2016 Phil was awarded ‘Diver of the Conference’ at the TekDive USA conference in Miami Florida. Phil became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) in 2018. Items In This Podcast Caving at age 14The Darkness Beckons Martyn FarrBritish Cave Diving GroupFinding new cavesExploration definedBacteria in breath can change pristine caves ecosystemEarly Nitrox misinformation and fake newsSouth Mexico’s J2 exploration – 45 days undergroundRisks of a cave diver vs. recreational diverCookie monster in a caveAntikythera mechanism wreck in GreeceGriffin Hound Wreck in Baltic SeaPhil Short Technical FacebookDark Water Exploration Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 031 : Phil Short – Legendary Technical Diver & Cave Explorer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Sarah Richard, diving professional and founder of Girls That Scuba Sarah Richard is the founder of the incredibly popular Girls That Scuba brand – the worlds largest female dive community. She spends her time traveling the world meeting Girls that Scuba members, hosting group trips, attending events and learning more about the ocean and the people of it. Sarah spent her time as a divemaster on a livaboard in Truk Lagoon doing multiple technical dives per day.  And that is when the concept came for Girls That Scuba, but ironically the reason why is not so pleasant as you will hear – sexism. That sexism brought about a movement.  It’s hard to believe that is still going on today.  This should have died out decades ago in our activity – some of the best divers in the world are female.  I think back to Dottie Frazier in League of Extraordinary Divers episode #4, Dottie was the first female scuba instructor ever!  You can hear all that she dealt with back in the 50’s and 60’s.  And she pioneered the way for many female dive professionals after her.  On a brighter note Sarah took that negative and turned it into a positive and fun movement.  One of unity.  The Girls that Scuba brand isn’t like some kind of women against the world movement.  It is all about positivity, encouragement, fun, and diving.  Check out Sarah and Girls That Scuba at girlsthatscuba.com and all the social media sites that go with it.  Items In This Podcast Divemastering in Truk LagoonSexism in divingMost amazing dive and scariest dive were the same diveGo Diving ShowGirls That Scuba Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 030 : Sarah Richard – Founder of Girls That Scuba appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Hal Watts, world record deep diver and legendary technical instructor Hal Watts (aka Mr. Scuba) is the founder of The Professional Scuba Association International (PSAI). His first experience with SCUBA was in 1955.  He pioneered many areas of extreme diving and technical diving.  In fact he set a World Record Deep Air Dive to 119 meters (390′), and Hal holds the World Record Deep Air Cave Dive at 127 m (415 feet). He has trained six other world record deep air divers, including his daughter Scarlett Watts, who in 1999 established a new Woman’s World Record Deep Air Dive to 129 m (425 feet). In 1996 Hal won the prestigious Diver of The Year Award for Education, presented by Beneath the Sea organization of NY. Hal was a Co-Founder of NACD And has been an Extended Range Instructor Trainer for PSA, IANTD, NASE, NAUI, PDIC and TDI. He is qualified to teach Deep Air, Nitrox, Extended Range Nitrox, Trimix, Rebreathers, Full Face Mask, Dry suit, Cave, Cavern, Diver Propulsion Vehicles, and Wreck Penetration. Hal is one of the diving industry’s foremost authorities on deep diving and he has written over 15 manual in dive education. Items In This Podcast Clorox bottles for BCDPioneering deep divingBeating narcosisEarly nitrox days Cave-in on a cave diveFirst dives in 40 Fathom GrottoFirst rebreather trainingProfessional Scuba Association International Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 029 : Hal Watts – Record Deep Diver & Technical Diving Pioneer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Mark Evans, legendary underwater journalist, Editor In Chief and Co-Founder of Scuba Diver Magazine Mark Evans has been diving since the age of 10.  He answered an ad for a water sports editor and his career in diving took off.  At the age of 25 he became the youngest diving magazine editor as Editor of Sport Diver Magazine in the United Kingdom.  He held that position for 18 years which allowed him the opportunity to literally dive all over the world.  Recently however, Mark began his own publishing company and co-founded Scuba Diver Magazine for the UK market.  But it has already grown into worldwide editions for Australia and New Zealand, and the US and Canada.  In fact, the US and Canada version is called Scuba Diver Destinations Magazine.  And it is an awesome publication.  And last year Mark and his business partner founded the Go Diving Show in Coventry, England.  This is a brilliant cutting edge diving show for both divers and pro’s.  Items In This Podcast First dive at 10 years of ageDiving in EnglandDid 1,500 dives BEFORE getting certified to diveWas the youngest editor of a diving magazineTiger Sharks in SudanThe horrible encounter on a river diveScapa Flow and other favorite divesScuba Diver MagazineScuba Diver Destinations MagazineGo Diving Show Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 028 : Mark Evans – Underwater Journalist & Magazine Editor appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Marty Snyderman – award-winning photographer, cinematographer, author and marine environment advocate Today’s guest is one of the top award winning underwater photographers in the diving industry.  Marty Snyderman is a legendary photographer, author, instructor, and speaker specializing in the underwater world. Marty’s still photography has been used for decades by the National Geographic Society, Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, Oceana, Shark Research Institute, museums and aquaria, and many major publications. For twenty years he worked as a cameraman and film producer, and he has even been awarded an EMMY for his underwater cinematography. Marty’s cinematography has been seen on numerous National Geographic productions, the PBS series Nature, the Discovery Channel, the BBC, and many other networks around the world. He also filmed the underwater segments in the Warner Brother’s film Free Willy. Marty is an inductee to DEMA’s SCUBA diving Hall of Fame, and in 2008 he won the prestigious DEMA Reaching Out Award. Marty currently serves as the Marine Life Editor of Dive Training Magazine and every month he produces at least three columns for the magazine; (1) the underwater photography column entitled Behind The Lens, (2) a natural history piece entitled What’s That, and (3) a column about his life entitled Always Learning. Marty teaches underwater photography seminars in dive centers in North America and at destinations around the globe. He is the Senior Editor and a columnist for California Diving News, and the co-author of a series of apps on underwater photography. Marty serves on the Board of Trustees of the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF at reef.org), and he also serves as an advisor to the Shark Research Institute (SRI at sharks.org) and the Center for Oceanic Awareness, Research & Education (COARE at coare.org). Items In This Podcast Childhood homework included Jacques CousteauSea HuntSemi-pro baseball playerWorked dive boats in CaribbeanThrown in jail during his scuba instructor courseHoward Hall assigned as his mentorCrashes a dinner with Stan WatermanSquid dives at night with Blue SharksRight Whale divingAmazing dive locationsTips for diversEncounter with a witch doctormartysnyderman.comMarty’s Dive Training Magazine Articles Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 027 : Marty Snyderman – Underwater Photographer & Cinematographer appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Linden Wolbert – Mermaid Entrepreneur, Ocean Advocate, and Children’s Educator Linden Wolbert (AKA Mermaid Linden) is arguably the most successful professional “entrepremermaid” in the world.  Not only was she one of the early pioneers of role playing mermaids, but she went on to do so much more. Through her love for the water and ocean she discovered she had a knack for freediving.  Linden, a skilled freediver, can hold her breath for an astounding 5 minutes, and dive to over 115 feet down and back up on a single breath of air.  While freediving she tried a monofin, which made her feel like a mermaid and the rest is history! Linden is on the board of directors of Reef Check Foundation, a non- profit which monitors the health of our world’s coral and rocky reef systems in an effort to conserve and protect them. She designed her own signature line of child and adult swim products for Body Glove, which have been found in the world’s largest retailers. A former PADI scuba diving model, she has completed over 800 dives around the world, and has officiated countless freediving national and world records as a, AIDA International freediving judge. Linden has a Bachelor of Science in Film and Environmental Science from Emerson College and is a PADI Master SCUBA Diver with a 15-year background in ocean conservation and education through visual storytelling and live performance. Combine those things together and you can see the inspiration for her mini-documentaries for children on her YouTube channel, called the Mermaid Minute series.  Which has over 45 Million video views and 80K YouTube subscribers.  You will love her enthusiasm, her stories and especially her heart for the underwater world. Items in This Podcast What it Means to be a MermaidFreediving InspirationMermaid Minute SeriesLine of Body Glove Mermaid ProductsMake-A-Wish FoundationReef Check FoundationFavorite Dive LocationsTips for Divers Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 026 : Linden Wolbert – Mermaid & Ocean Advocate appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Bill High – Fisheries and NOAA Diving Officer, President of NAUI, Saturation Diver, and Founder of Professional Scuba Inspectors (PSI) Bill High founded PSI, Inc. (Professional Scuba Inspectors), a training company for inspectors of high pressure cylinders.  Located near Seattle, Washington, he began training cylinder inspectors in 1983 and set the SCUBA/SCBA industry standard for technical inspections.  Presently Bill is a senior consultant to more than 70 cylinder inspector trainers in North America and at numerous international locations.  Bill was a diving consultant to the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and a United Nations committee. Trained as a marine scientist, Bill worked for more than 37 years in the marine science field using scuba and advanced diving systems as essential research tools. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Bill introduced and promoted diving to numerous marine science agencies that had not yet learned the value of scuba as a research tool. He served as the national diving officer for both US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and  National Marine Fisheries Service as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) first National Diving Coordinator. Bill wrote the first scientific diving regulations for each agency. Bill led 4 aquanaut first mission saturation scientific diving programs (Tektite, Hydrolab, Edalhab, Helgoland) and directed 5 major deep submersible research expeditions in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.  Bill is a prolific writer with more than 160 articles and five books authored or co-authored.  His latest book, BENEATH THE SEA– A Sampling of Diving and Other Adventures, recounts many of his technical diving experiences. His book INSPECTING CYLINDERS is the gas industry standard for cylinder safety inspections. The majority of his more than 160 published articles promoted dive industry safety. Certified as National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) Instructor #175 in 1961, Bill went on to serve NAUI for many years as North Pacific Branch Manager (10 years), Member of the Board of Directors (8 years), President (4 years), Board of Advisors (10 years), Director of International Affairs (3 years) and other duties.  He trained more than 8,000 basic and advanced divers before focusing his efforts to promote cylinder safety through technical visual inspections.  He personally trained more than 3,000 professional cylinder inspectors and federal hydrostatic re-testers. Bill’s awards for service to diving have been many including lifetime achievement awards from both NAUI and PADI.  He has been honored by inter-state safety agencies, state and community groups.  He is the only living person to receive three NOGI Awards  (Sports Education (1964), Science (1991) and Distinguished Service (2007). NOGI recognition is among the highest honors awarded in the scuba diving industry. In 2009, Bill was named recipient of the diving industry’s highest recognition, the Reaching Out Award.  In 2015, Bill was named to the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame. Bill High is one of the truest pioneers of international diving.  His 64-year contribution to recreational diving, educational diving, scientific diving as well as technical diving support is truly remarkable. Items in this Podcast Began diving in 1955Early marine sciences1960 Part of first NAUI Instructor course in Houston, TXUS Fisheries Diving Officer1970 Tektite IIFounded the NOAA Diving ManualSaturation and submersible divingPresident of NAUIThe incident that made Bill become a cylinder safety expertBill’s role in the “Dolphin Safe Tuna” campaignFavorite diving locationTips for divers Resources PSICylinders.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 025 : Bill High – Saturation Diver and Cylinder Safety Expert appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Eric Douglas – Author of the famous Mike Scott diving thriller novels, and diving safety expert In this podcast episode I chat with Eric Douglas. Eric Douglas grew up watching “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” and dreamed of diving with Captain Cousteau. He became a diver, and then a dive instructor.  With his journalism degree Eric combined professional diving with writing and contributed articles to diving magazines. That landed him at the headquarters of PADI where he assisted in the development of their training materials.  Along the way he embraced health and safety courses and became and EMT and a DMT – a diving medical technician.  That opened doors for him to join Divers Alert Network in their training department.  On the side Eric was writing nonfiction works on lobster divers, war veterans, and cancer survivors, and since 2009 he has written the extremely popular Lessons for Life column for Scuba Diving Magazine. One of my favorites. But then there are his epic novels.  Through his fictional works, Eric takes readers on adventures of their own. His stories have everything thriller junkies crave; action, adventure and intrigue, all set against a backdrop of beautiful locations, the ocean, and scuba diving. The fast-paced stories are exciting and inspiring to divers and future divers. He has authored eight novels and two novellas in the Mike Scott thriller series: Cayman Cowboys, Flooding Hollywood, Guardians’ Keep, Wreck of the Huron, Heart of the Maya, Return to Cayman, Oil and Water, The 3rd Key: Sharks in the Water, Turks and Chaos: Hostile Waters and the latest Water Crisis: Day Zero. He has also written a series of dive thriller short stories set on the fictional Withrow Key in the Florida Keys. He authored four children’s stories, collected in the book Sea Turtle Rescue and Other Stories. Eric currently serves as the Associate Producer for the West Virginia Public Broadcasting show Inside Appalachia. Items in this Podcast 30 years in divingJournalism majorWorked at PADI and Divers Alert NetworkFavorite dive site is not internationalWho he taught how to dive from Baywatch Mike Scott novels – great fictional reads for diversWho is Mike Scott based on? Resources BooksByEric.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 024 : Eric Douglas – Author and Diving Safety Expert appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Welcome to The Dive Locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business. I’m your host Tec Clark and thank you everybody for being here on another episode of The Dive Locker. Hey, you might remember in episode two I mentioned that, we’ve got hurricane Dorian bearing down on The Bahamas. Well at the time of this episode, it is still there. It is still bearing down on them. And I also mentioned in the last episode that we are going to hear about the relief efforts that are going to be needed for our friends in The Bahamas and, as this is starting to unfold and the news of the devastation that’s coming out is, is just catastrophic. So you’re going to hear about different relief efforts and we’ll see and keep our ears posted for what ones are coming out that are industry specific. But there is one I mentioned last time and that is going to be the GoFundMe campaign that was launched for Cristina’s Zenato. Now, many of you know Cristina. She was on the League of Extraordinary Divers, but she has been really all over the place. She’s had so many documentaries, about her and her just beautiful relationship with the sharks that she has embraced over her many years at UNEXSO. She’s such a good caring soul. And now, Cathryn Castle Garcia and Gui Garcia have created this GoFundMe account to support and help them out. And so I think this is just fantastic. I’m looking at it right now. It is Cristina Zenato Grand Bahama 9119. And Cristina by the way, is spelled without an “h”. It’s C R I S T I N A Folks, there’s already been over $7,000 raised at the time of this recording. So that is awesome that you all stepped up and, and came to the challenge for this. This is so cool. Great to see that. And so our thoughts and prayers are with Cristina and everyone else down there.  I can’t wait to hear from Stuart Cove and see how he fared down there as well, and all of the operators. So look for more news on that coming up here in the future. Well today we’ve got a really cool episode. We are going to get into a little bit of the business side of diving and that is going to be an area that I’m quite passionate about. We’re going to talk about value selling, value selling, what it is and how we can sell on value rather than price. This is going to be a two part series because of the complexity and the content that we deal with. So we’ve got that and we’re also going to do an icebreaker that I think you will really enjoy, that you can put into your classroom environments. And it’s really a great one for communications as well as being an icebreaker. So there you go. Let’s get into it. Let’s have a great episode of The Dive Locker. Ready? Dive, dive, dive! Value Selling Part 1 For our first dive business segment, we’re going to be talking about value selling. Now this is an area near and dear to my heart. I have spoken on this at the DEMA Show. I’ve spoken on this at ICUE, which is the International Conference on Underwater Education with NAUI. And I’ve done an article on this at Dive Center Business magazine. So this is something I’m very passionate about and what we’re going do is we’re going break this into two parts. Value selling part one will be in this episode of The Dive Locker and value selling part two will be in episode four of The Dive Locker, the next episode. So be on the lookout for that. We’re going to break it down into the two areas of competing with “price” and then competing with “value”. So this episode we’re going to talk about the competing with price part of selling. Okay. Don’t you love a good deal? I do. I mean who doesn’t? Right? Has this ever happened to you? You go to the grocery store and you’re going to get some food or something like that, and all of a sudden you pass by coffee and you see that there is a buy one get one free offer going on with the coffee. Now, this might not be a brand that you normally use and you might not even need coffee, but you’re saying to yourself, “wow, this is a really good deal, and I know I will need coffee in the future if I get one free, what can I do with that extra seven bucks? Hey, maybe I can get that cool ice cream. I’ve been wanting to try.” Well, does that sound familiar? And then you wind up getting that and you wind up kind of having that tension of the fear of missing out on. If you don’t get that, you know, what have you lost? You know, this is such great value, right? And so you wind up walking away getting coffee, which wasn’t on your list, and you get ice cream, which wasn’t on your list, right? So all of a sudden we have seen consumerism played out in a wonderful and magical way. And that is done by the company. So the coffee company wants to launch their product, they want to get out the new brand or the new flavor or whatever it is of the coffee. So they throw what’s called a loss leader in there. They throw a free one. So now they’re not making the same margins on those per unit sales. But what they are getting is a greater share of market. So now more people get to try the product and as they try it, then they tell their friends, they like it, and they get more later on. And so the buy one get one uses the one product as the loss leader. And in return they gain customers. So loss leader strategies work well with goods because it’s easy to calculate those per unit costs and you can kind of accommodate for this and so forth. But the deal is this, can you do loss leaders strategies to services, especially our services in the diving industry – scuba certification courses. This is an issue, and our industry really needs to take attention to this because what we’re doing is in using some strategies that are out there like this, we are taking professional training and we’re reducing it down to bargain basement discount prices that doesn’t work. And here’s the reason why. If we want to attract customers and we use strategies of discounting and we based those strategies on price, what is the cost? Now the cost in this case is that you actually deplete the quality experience for the student getting training and you produce a poor student! Now what do I mean by this and how can discounting affect training that much? So here’s how this works. We often hear about competing with the dive center down the street and so if they offer a $199 open water diver course, well the other person’s going to offer a $99 course. Or they’re offering a $99 course, so we’re going to offer a two for one GroupOn. Now, the problem with this is that the dive centers in this case are competing on price rather than on value. Price comparison is not sustainable. There will always be someone, some company somewhere who will underprice you, especially from individuals who want to break into the business and they are willing to undercut the competition in order to gain customers. Sound familiar like the coffee example, right? But the deal is that if you react to those competitors by discounting your products and services, you’re likely to run yourself out of the business and be out of business in two to four years. That’s just the painful truth about trying to compete on price. Now, why do we see this happening so much in our industry? You know, many people point to that, well, dive center owners and managers don’t have business backgrounds, which is true in a lot of cases, but that’s not necessarily what’s going on. What’s going on is it’s the opposite side. We are all consumers and we deal with consumerism and so we have to understand that there are consumer driven strategies that erode business models. Now they might work for big box retailers, but do they work for dive centers? Not really. Here’s some things to take into consideration on consumerism. So first of all, we love things cheap and quick, right? So what we do now is we go shopping on Amazon and Alibaba and other Internet retailers and we’re looking for the cheapest and quickest way to get things right? And so that’s part of us, but yet we want to have businesses that are sustainable and we don’t want these customers to go to the Internet and, and you know, get their goods elsewhere. We want them to come into our dive centers. Well, wait a minute, it’s the same thing. You are a consumer too. And we have to understand that this is part of consumerism to get things cheap and quick. Then we’re also seeing that c-cards, the certification card is being turned into a commodity. So a commodity is any economic good that can be bought and sold. But you’re probably thinking, isn’t scuba certification a service? Well, you might be thinking that, but think about this. The consumer looks at the c-card as the means to the end to go diving. So they know if they want to be a diver, they need the c-card. You see? So it’s about being a diver. It’s about getting to dive, which means I need to hold this seat guard to do it. That turns the c-card into a commodity, a product, just like anything else. So what the consumer’s going to do is look at that c-card as, “how can I get it as cheap and quick as possible?” This is natural. It’s not the consumers’ fault to think this way. We’re just inclined to do so. So when we have prospective students that are looking for cheap and quick, don’t dismiss them as being flighty or aloof or noncommittal. They’re just being consumers. And then we’re also seeing loss lead discounting. The loss leader, like I talked about in the coffee example, right? But here’s the deal. What we’re seeing with loss leading is that dive centers are using training to be the loss leader to get people in so that then greater purchases can be made down the line for continuing education, for equipment sales, and for dive travel. All of these things to get the consumer in the door is the loss leader of offering a discounted course. So now if that loss lead discounting comes in and that course is sold for $99 or a two for one type of a GroupOn thing, what’s being lost? Well, this is where the slippery slope happens. It’s not as simple as a product is sold and now I have a per unit sale is down a little bit like in the coffee example. Now to be able to keep afloat for a service that has such fixed costs and variable costs like a scuba certification course does, that becomes an issue. What we’re seeing is the training is suffering from these consumer driven strategies. They erode the dive center business model, and they erode the quality of training that can be offered. Here’s how that is happening. Okay, so let’s say that you’re competing by price to the dive center down the street and you start to do your pricing strategies. You start to do the discounting and get that bargain basement price just to get people in the door. Now what’s going to happen is that in a loss leader, which has the sacrifice kinda to it, if you just sacrificed everything at the high quality level, then the expenses of that loss lead would crush your business. So what happens is to balance out the loss leader, dive centers are pulling back on the services offered just so they can kind of survive that initial loss leader experience, that initial discounted training experience. Here’s how that happens. First of all, we start to look at those, like I said before, fixed costs and variable costs, right? And those things are going to include, first, let’s look at pool time. So pool time renting pools. Now this can be done by the hour or by the student, but it’s costly. And so what we’re seeing is that some people are shaving the pool time by a day or two or hours just to save money. So now the student experience underwater isn’t there anymore. So what happens is they are now discounting that pool experience. They’re pulling back on it. So by pulling back on the amount of hours spent in the pool, there’s the savings of the pool rental, but there’s also the savings on the instructor’s hourly rate as well. If an instructor is paid by the hour, and then think about this, if the dive center pays their instructor per student, well then what’s the motivation for the instructor to offer longer pool time? You see, so these two things really hurt the student experience when you start to pull back the pool time. Now what about classroom time? Well, usually there’s not rentals that are going along with the classroom. Those are usually done in the dive center, so you don’t have to pay for the rental, but what do you have to pay for? It’s the instructor. So the more time that an instructor is spending in front of the students, the more expense there is to pay that instructor. So what we’re seeing is many dive centers moving more towards the e-learning. Now don’t get me wrong, e-learning is awesome. It’s a great tool for diver training. It really is. But here’s what we’re seeing. Some dive centers are keeping their instructors completely out of the classroom. They’re just having them do e-learning. And then they’re saying, “all right, well let’s meet and do our paperwork and review our knowledge reviews on the pool deck.” So they don’t even come to the store. They’re just going to the pool deck. Now think about this, how many distractions are there on a pool deck?  So that’s not a good time to bond. It’s not a good time to get to know people and it’s not a good time to start going over paperwork and the first knowledge reviews and such. It just isn’t. So by missing out on that classroom time to save money and go more on that e-learning, it actually winds up hurting that instructor student relationship. That’s an important piece of developing divers. And then we also look at the expertise area that changes. Now what do I mean by that? Well, think about this. Who is teaching the majority of courses and what are the majority of courses that are being taught? So in most dive centers, open water diver is kind of the prime catchall. It gets most people in the door. Well who are the people that are going to be teaching that? Is this going to be the tenured veteran instructor that’s moved into technical diving and things like that? No, it’s usually going to be the brand new instructors cutting their teeth. These are also the people that have the lowest pay rates. They’re being paid the least. Why? Because they’re the least experienced. So there’s a lot of dive centers that say, “yeah, we’re going to go ahead and use our least paid instructors to teach our loss leaders scuba class, open water diver.” So you don’t want to really go down that road too much because saving the buck and you know, even not giving divemasters to assist that new instructor just to save a buck. That can deteriorate that training experience too. And then finally, location. What we’re seeing a lot is instead of places going out and renting a really nice pool at an aquatics complex that has a really nice dive, well you know, something 12 feet, 16 feet, 18 feet deep, that type of thing. We’re seeing dive centers say, “Hey, we got to save money on this loss leader. We’re going to go to other locations so we don’t have to pay for a pool at all.” And we’re seeing that dive centers will go to hotels or apartment complexes in an effort to cut costs. Now hear me out. If you’re in a resort and you are at a dive resort and the only pool is the pool at the resort, I get that. Don’t worry about that. That’s not what we’re talking about. I’m talking about the person that could literally do deep water training, but they are purposefully saying, “no, we’re going to go into a free shallow pool to save money on the course to get people into the course because we’re going to loss lead price it, discount price it.” Wait a minute. So that is really a tricky situation because now if you’re in that six foot deep apartment complex pool, where is the training for equalization really happening? Where is the training for neutral buoyancy really happening? Where are we feeling the wetsuit compress because of depth? You know, it’s different things like that that we kind of miss out on when we go down that road. And another area that we’re seeing here in South Florida, we have dozens of charter dive boats all around us, and boat diving is typical for these parts. But we will have dive centers that save on the training and not take their students out on a dive boat and they’ll do all of their training off the beach. Now the beach is free and just pay for some parking, right? But the deal is, is that now you’re only going to probably a max depth of about 20 feet. So now you’re open water diver never gets to experience much deeper than 20 feet and they never get to go on a dive boat! Now again, I’m talking about South Florida. There’s many of you that are landlocked and that’s okay. You and the lake are your only options. But I’m talking about purposefully saying, “you know you live here in South Florida but we’re not going to actually take you out on a dive boat because of keeping the course costs down.” So are we then, by doing that deep discounting in scuba training, are we actually hurting the diver and their experience to be a good well-trained diver? I think so. And I’m not the only one folks, maybe you agree. There’s many of you listening to this that are in the same mindset and opinion. I hear it from charter boat dive captains everywhere, crew everywhere, other dive professionals that go out and look and observe. This is a buzz. We are all sitting here saying the same things. There are students that do not know how to set up their gear and I mean new newly certified divers that do not know how to equalize that do not have good buoyancy. And so where is this coming from? When me and my colleagues take a look at where this is coming from. There is one common denominator that we’re always seeing. It is the suppressed training courses, the courses that are reduced down to as cheap and quick as they can possibly be. And that is where we are seeing that competing on price is actually hurting our industry. It’s hurting our students. And if our student comes out, ill prepared, ill equipped, they’re not comfortable, they’re not confident, they’re banging into the reef and then they’re being yelled at for banging into the reef. They can’t get underwater and they’re holding up their buddies because they’re not good at equalization. How long you think they’re going to persist in this activity? They’re not. They quit. And in a place like here in South Florida, when you get on Craig’s List or OfferUp or anything that’s offering equipment, you’d be amazed to see the amount of titles that say “gear used one time”,  “gear use two times” and now it’s for sale. Wait a minute, there’s something broken here folks! And I point to this area of discounted training of discounted services, and I think that it’s really a serious problem that we need to look at in the industry. So now I have just really illustrated why competing with price has some challenges. Next episode is going to be the answer to this. Why do we not want to compete on price but on value? What will it be that we can offer a value that makes a student come to your dive center and choose you over the competition, but you might even be higher priced. Wait a minute, how can that be? I’m going to explain that to you next week, so we’re going to get into that. Be on the lookout for that next episode. “The Reporter” Icebreaker Here’s a cool strategy for an icebreaker. If you don’t know what it is, is basically that type of activity that you do at the beginning of a group meeting or gathering or class or wherever it is that you want to break the ice, get people to know each other and learn who the other people are in the meeting or the classroom or whatever. So icebreakers are a really good thing to do for our scuba classes at all levels. They’re great to do for meetings, anything that you want to introduce people to each other and get that out of the way in a fun and dynamic way. It really adds to the fun of our scuba courses at adds to a stimulating environment and a way to get to know buddies quicker. Now this icebreaker is called The Reporter and this one is ideal for divemaster and instructor training. This was introduced to me at Pro Dive by Kelly Levendorf, my good buddy and I love this one. So I’m giving him props for this. And it was fantastic, we did it all the time at Pro Dive. And so here’s what this is about. The Reporter is where you’re going to have your class sitting around. And what they have to do is buddy up into teams of two and with their teams of two, they are going to take turns interviewing the other person, just asking them questions about themselves, their history, what their diving was like whatever it is that you want to give them to kind of “report” on and give each person three to five minutes to learn about the other one, where they’re from, what they like, what they don’t like, what their diving background is. All these different things they’re to report to the other person. Now, once both people have interviewed the other person, now it’s time to go around the room and instead of introducing yourself and telling people about yourself, the other buddy is the one introducing you. So have the “reporter” stand up and say, “hey everybody, I’d like you to meet So-and-so. This person is from Chicago originally and became a diver at the age of 15 back home and blah, blah blah,” and on and on and on. Right? And so you then see that there is more attention given to the person that is doing the reporting. Everyone’s listening and the person speaking is really into talking about the other candidate, right? So they’re not shy and embarrassed and they don’t want to talk about themselves and they’re looking down. They’re actually very engaged in telling what the other person told them. Now, here’s another great piece about this, is that not only do you command the room, you have more attention and people will lean in and listen more, but here’s what’s great for you, the trainer. You get to see and measure the communications skills of every person in the room before the class has even started. You are now assessing who you need to work with more for their communication skills, what’s their body language, what’s their crutch words? All of these things all of a sudden come out and it’s early on and you get to see how good they are or how rusty they are. So this is, I think, one of the coolest icebreakers. That’s why I wanted to share it with you. Again, props to my buddy, Kelly Levendorf who’s now at Rainbow Reef and he just gets all the credit for this one and, all the days that we were doing it at Pro Dive as well. I’m sure he’s doing it down there too now. So, thanks Kelly and definitely look at using this in your next leadership courses. You’ll love it. Hey, thanks for listening my friends. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. That way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live and please leave a rating. Also, you can leave me comments and feedback. Go to ScubaGuru.com find The Dive Locker podcast and you’ll see the microphones on that page. Just click the icon on the microphone and send us a message. Also, remember that every episode is going to have its own dedicated show notes page. So for this episode number three, you’ll have a dedicated page that will have links to everything we discussed in this episode, including the link to the article, The Value of Value Selling, which I wrote for Dive Center Business. I’ll provide the link for the Dive Center Business online so that you can read that article. So there you go. Thanks again everybody. We will see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care, my friends. Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to leave a comment or suggestion for this podcast? Simply record yourself below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The Dive Locker podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes , Google Play Music , or Stitcher to get automatic updates. The post 003 Value Selling Part 1, The Reporter Icebreaker appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Welcome to The Dive Locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business, I’m your host Tec Clark and thank you so much for being a part of episode number two. It’s great to have you here folks. At the time of this recording, it is Labor Day weekend of 2019 and we have hurricane Dorian baring down on The Bahamas right now as we speak. This is a massive category five hurricane and we don’t know the damage yet of what this, this storm is causing, but we know it’s bad and so we just lift up all of our thoughts and prayers to everybody in The Bahamas and especially our diving industry colleagues. Boy, the diving industry could be absolutely hit hard from a storm of this category, the reefs, the dive centers, the dive boats, the resorts, the infrastructure to get in and out. So our dive center operations down there, I have a feeling are going to need our support. A couple of our diving industry notables down there that you may know, Stuart Cove, who was actually on the League of Extraordinary Divers podcast, episode six, and also Cristina Zenato, from the League of Extraordinary Divers podcast, episode 19. They’re both being impacted by this. And so with that, we really, really need to understand what they’re going through and what needs they might have when the storm leaves. Our good friends, Cathryn Castle Garcia and Captain Gui Garcia with C2G2 Productions have already launched a GoFundMe campaign for Cristina Zenato. Now they did a video segment with her, they’re very close and so they felt the need to reach out right now, even while this hurricane is bearing down and come up with a GoFundMe account for Cristina Zenato Grand Bahama and I will put the link to that GoFundMe in the Show notes page for this episode. I have a feeling that there is going to need some disaster relief for our dive businesses down there. So we’ll keep you updated on how this goes. Our next episodes we’ll hear what the outcomes of the storms are from The Bahamas. So again, everybody please keep The Bahamas in your thoughts and prayers. In-Service Training Okay everyone. So today in episode two of the dive locker, we’re going to go over a risk management strategy that is absolutely overlooked in the diving industry and one that can completely change the dynamics of your emergency action plans. It’s called in-service training. The second thing we’re gonna go over today is the jacket drill. If you want good clear communication teaching for your divemaster and instructor candidates, people that are going through training to become a dive professional, they need to have a great clear communications, right? The jacket drill is part of that. And I’ll share that with you too today. And also today we’re going to hit some of the industry’s latest news for you. So here we go. Let’s dive in. Let’s take a look at in-service training; what is it and how can it be effective for you as a dive professional? Well, in-service training is basically a term that you see and hear used a lot within health and safety professions such as lifeguarding, law enforcement, EMS (emergency medical services). And what it is is it’s to keep those perishable skills, those hands on health and safety skills fresh. Now the other unique thing about it is that it’s not done in classrooms. So we don’t just sit and do our normal CPR on a mannequin and a classroom in a sterile environment like we’ve learned before. In-service training is meant to be in service during your normal operations. And so for that, an in-service training will take place in the field. That means in our situation, in the diving industry, that we would take our emergency training and we would bring it into the environment. So instead of pushing on a CPR mannequin in a classroom with a little pad under your knees and things like that, in air condition, nope, we’re going to go on the boat. We’re going to be in rocking and rolling seas. You’re going to have your wetsuit on. You’re going to be pouring with a wetness from the water coming out of your wetsuit and sweat or whatever the case is. And trying to do your CPR on a moving boat with chaos and everything that goes with that, that is more accurate and realistic. And so what we see within service training is that it’s done mostly for the workers, mostly for people to get and keep their skills going at the workplace. Now you can also have people coming in outside of the workplace to help with this in-service training in areas like being bystanders or being multiple victims or being a spouse or a loved one of a victim or patient. And that person is a little chaotic, you know? So you can make all kinds of scenarios. But the biggest thing about in service training is that it is all about realism. So we want in-service training to be as realistic as absolutely possible. So how do we make this as realistic as possible? We’ll think about this in an actual emergency. What would you have at your disposal to use? Where would the things be, et cetera? So we want everything to be as natural and normal as possible for our preparation. And then we want the scenarios to dictate the rest. So here’s a few things that can make realism happen in your in-service trainings. First of all, cell phones. You can use a cell phone to be pre-programmed into a number that is used for another person that is on the other end of that cell phone. That could be a 911 operator or an EMS operator. So this operator then plays the role using a script to then ask the appropriate questions. This is a great way to do this because what happens is, is that an individual winds up realizing that they have to walk around with a phone attached to their head while they are transporting an O2 unit or setting up a O2 unit or an AED or whatnot. And all of a sudden it becomes very realistic. How many times have you seen a Rescue class or a simulated emergency, somebody that puts their hand up to their head, makes that little a symbol with the fingers, like they’re on a phone and then they say, “oh yeah, I just called EMS”. No, it doesn’t work that way. We want an individual to see what it’s like to try to carry things or do things with their hands or write stuff down or whatever it is with a cell phone attached to their head. That’s where it gets real. Now what we also can do is use dummy cell phones. My favorite is once a cell phone got put into the laundry and it got totally damaged. So I used that as a prop cell phone. And in that case, that’s great for if you’re wet and you’re out on the boat or whatnot, you’re not worried about an actual cell phone getting ruined because of all the wet coming off of your body or, or a wetsuit or whatnot. So in that case, we put the 911 operator next to the person making the call, and that 911 operator just has a script on a clipboard and goes through it and follows the person around that has the phone, to their ear. So that’s one way to make it be realistic. Another thing is bystanders. So if you can have individuals that are part of the scenario, part of the scene, they could be other divers, they could be people on the dive boat, they could be people on the shore, they could be people on the side of the pool or other swimmers at the pool. But what happens is, is that these bystanders become part of the process. So if the lifeguards start pulling people out of the pool, now they can come in and add to the drama of the scenario. This can happen on the boat, this can happen on the lake, wherever as well, right? You can have other divers come up and those other divers are part of a class or they are the buddy of a diver and they can be varying in their level of drama. Is it a spouse, a loved one? Is it a fraternity or sorority brother or sister, best friend, right? The list goes on and on and you can make all kinds of things up. And we even have scenarios where we’ll have individuals come along and say, “hi, I’m a nurse. Can I help?” And see if your staff actually uses those people. And so bystanders are a good little curve ball to throw in. And then victims. So you need to have people, we don’t want to do everything with mannequins. So using victims and having them be as dead weight limp as possible because that is very different than people that are rigid. So adding that true limp, dead weight to it really helps make it more realistic. Now move them to the point of an exit point or whatever. But yeah, don’t actually start doing the process of CPR on an actual person. Even simulating that doesn’t do well. Swap out that person for a mannequin at that point so that you can do all of the true compressions and make it work at that point. One of the things that I absolutely love is old wetsuits. So we bring in old wetsuits into our in-service training to make it more realistic. What we do with the wetsuits is we put them on the CPR mannequin. That way when it is time to put the AED pads on, they’ve got to cut away the wetsuit. So we teach the process of how to cut away a wetsuit and we use it with old damaged wetsuits that that have come in and we just hang on to them for this specific purpose. And that way you understand the importance of having sheers along with the AED.  And training units. You want to have units that can be used for this. Now I am a big, big proponent of having actual oxygen flowing. I am not one that puts air in the oxygen units for these kinds of uh, scenarios and training. No. People need to be comfortable with the actual gas and have a true respect for the actual gas that’s being used. They will handle it differently if it is not actual oxygen, so we keep training units on hand that are real, they’re live, they’re totally functional, but if they get wet sandy and slightly banged up, then it’s not such an issue. And then also we have the timing of this. Now here is what I love. Once you start getting into that role of CPR and so forth, it goes on kind of a cruise control right? Until EMS arrives in a real scenario. Well think about this. What you can do is you can look at what your county or city has for an average EMS response time. Now here in Broward County, it’s between 8 and 12 minutes. Now what we do is as soon as the call for help, the phone call has been completed to 911 in our scenarios, then we will do an 8 to 10 minute or 12 minute buffer to wait till we actually cancel the training we are, or end scenario. We want them to feel what it would be like to truly wait. Now let’s say you’re on the dive boat and you’ve got to wait for the coast guard or whatever, those kinds of services, it could be much longer. So to cycle through your staff and have them swap out roles and continuously circulate to wait until quote unquote EMS arrives. That’s really awesome. You can also add your public safety, your EMS, you can add realistic arrivals of those people too so that they know where to go and how to access people and so forth. So this is key is having this realism in place for in-service trainings. Now here’s what’s going to happen. You need to structure this in a few ways. First you have to have yourselves evaluators, one or two or more that are the top dog professionals in this area of health and safety training at your dive center. And they are the ones that are evaluating, and they are the ones kind of calling the shots. They tell the bystandards when and what to do early on. They’re the ones calling out that the victim has no pulse or is not breathing, et Cetera.  Then you’ve got the opportunity to write down all of the things that you’re observing. What could have been done better, what are the wrong things, what are the good things and put all that together because that goes into a debriefing. The debriefing is a critical element of all in-service training. It brings together a person’s own self reflection of what they’ve learned during this time and what they think they did right, what they think they did wrong, and then the evaluators come in and also comment on what they did right and what they did wrong. The debriefing is huge in this. Now, here’s the big, big piece evaluators. The debriefing cannot be about all the negative and “you did that so bad that this person is going to die”, et cetera. Although that might be a fact. You may be able to mention something to that effect, but in-service trainings are supposed to be an environment that if people get it wrong, okay, guess what? You’ve learned a lesson and you’re going to go have pizza and beer after your in-service training because it wasn’t real. The deal is is that if those same mistakes happened in the real world, in the real scenario, people aren’t going for beer and pizza afterwards. In fact, it’s a very, very dark side that takes place. So what we’re looking at here is an ability to let people make mistakes. If this is their time to learn, this is their time to learn. Don’t be too overly critical about mistakes. They are part of a learning process. So embrace it and endeavor to do better. Now, here’s the secret sauce of doing better. You ready for this? You have to do your scenarios twice. I’ll say it again. You have to do your scenarios twice. So whatever scenario you did with whatever team you did, they have to do it a second time. The reason being is is that you need to convince that learning has taken place. It’s all about readiness. So remember when we have a true diving incident, the majority of the time that things go wrong is that people are taken off guard. They’re taken by surprise. They didn’t know where to exit the water. They didn’t know how to get the victim to a spot where EMS would pick them up, whatever. They weren’t prepared for the phone call, whatever the case is, this will flesh that all out. And when you do it a second time, then there is no surprises that come from the second time. They gain their confidence, they watch the time. And by the way, I always time things like how long it takes somebody to get a victim out of the water and then onto oxygen or CPR or the first breaths put in them, whatever it is you’re measuring. Keep a running list on a clock, a time clock so that you can say, hey look, in scenario number one, you started CPR three minutes after removing the victim from the water. In scenario number two, you started CPR one minute and 20 seconds after removing the victim from the water. And that makes people feel good because they got efficiencies and effectiveness. So that is a huge thing. Folks, do it twice. And we round-robin our staff, so we have team A, team B, Team C, team D and we have them all rotating through their different roles as bystanders, as victims, and as the dive team that would be the workers in the scenario doing their emergency work. And so when we rotate them all through, they all get the opportunity to do it. So yeah. Is this going to take time away from your other operations at your dive center? Is this going to cost money to have all your employees on the clock? Yes, but it is absolutely well, well worth it. Here’s the reason why. You all think you have emergency action plans, EAPs all set locked down and nailed. But guess what? Once you literally do these things, you realize the flaws and I’m guaranteeing you there will be many. The other thing is what about working with others? You see if you’re on that dive boat, have you done emergency training with the crew? Now I’m not talking that you took your rescue diver course out on a dive boat and you did some rescue diving and they kind of played along. I’m talking truly interacting with the crew on the boat, making it a dialogue with the captain and the captain saying, “yes, I have just called US Coast Guard” and that kind of stuff. You can do it at your pools, you can do it at your lakes, quarries, any place that you’re diving. You know, one of my favorite stories on this is with a YMCA. We had an individual come in and propose to a YMCA that they could do scuba training at the y and the y said, “okay”. And so they did scuba training and what happened was I challenged them that have they ever worked with the lifeguards to do scenarios to do actual rescues in case they needed it for their classes. They said they hadn’t. So they embarked on this process and it was a completely eye opening experience because the emergency action plans that the lifeguards had in place were ridiculously off from the emergency action plan of the dive crew. The two stumbled all over everything. They couldn’t figure out the oxygen units, they couldn’t work together on the removal of the victims from the water. We do it one way, they do it with backboards on and on and on, and where is EMS to come? And Oh my goodness, it was an absolute amazing amount of learning that took place and they were so grateful that they did it. And guess what? One month later they needed to use the emergency services because a diver had an injury that required an EMS response. And because of that, it went smoothly. If it didn’t, it would have been absolutely disastrous for everyone involved. So there you go, my friends. That’s in-service training in a nutshell. Now, if you want to see more about this and learn more about this, I have an article that I wrote for Alert Diver magazine. It is at Alert Diver Online. You can go to www.alertdiver.com/emergencysimulations. The name of the article is Emergency Simulations for Dive Professionals and it goes into detail more detail about what I’ve just said here. So look that up. I will put this link in the Show notes page so you can easily access it and uh, and get to it. So there you go. That is in-service training in a nutshell. If you have any tips, suggestions, techniques that you want to share about in service training, you can go to our website and you can click on the link on the microphone and talk about any tips that you have for in-service training. I know tons of you are doing some cool things and by the way, can you bring this into your rescue classes? You bet you can. A lot of these things work for rescue diver courses as well. The Jacket Drill So we all know that communication is one of the key skills that one needs to have to be a dive professional. And we start training that at the divemaster level, right? And then Assistant Instructor and Instructor. We don’t stop training for communication. Communication is key for doing dive briefings, for commanding dive situations like rescues, for teaching in the classroom. All of these different areas that we use. Clear communication skills are super important. But what are we doing to actually enhance it? A lot of times we hand them the slates and say “here, go for it”. And we give them critiques and all. But there’s another way that you can bring some cool training into your classroom for clear communications. It’s called the Jacket Drill and it’s one of my favorite drills to do for extra good, clear communication training. And here’s what it is. You get two people, one has a jacket, get the jacket, it can be any kind of jacket, a cool scuba patch jacket, which would be awesome. I think those need to come back, by the way. I know they’re so tacky and if you disagree with that, but I don’t know, I think they need to come back. They’re pretty cool. So, uh, anyhow, I digress. The jacket. So what you want to do is have two people and one jacket and you look at the jacket. Both people look at it and give it a little study and understand it. But then they go back to back. Now the trainer can take the jacket and the trainer can do what they want with it. They could button it up, they could unbutton it, they could button one button, they could pull one sleeve out, they could turn it inside out, they could do whatever they want to the jacket. And then the two people, one is the instructor and one is the student. The trainer hands the jacket to the student. Now the student can’t speak, the student is silent the whole time and the instructor must blindly, well his or her back is to, the student must try to get the jacket on to the student and buttoned up and perfectly ready to go. So as it starts, the student is holding the jacket and the instructor starts giving clear communications hopefully of what to do, how to hold the jacket, where to hold the jacket, what to do with the jacket, which arm goes where on and on and on. The student is to just listen and do exactly what the instructor says to do. So what winds up happening is the instructor goes through all of these, these instructions to the point where the instructor feels confident that it is on right and it’s all buttoned up, ready to go. At that point then the instructor can turn around and see how accurate or not those directions were. And so here’s what winds up happening. Usually it’s messed up because when the instructor says, put your right arm through the hole of the sleeve of the right arm, well guess what? There’s two holes. And so the student can put their arm through the bottom hole of the jacket where the hand normally comes out, right? Not inside where the armpit is. And then they’re wearing this jacket completely disheveled  and wrong. It is really cool. And what you want to do is give them the opportunity to do it again. So after everybody does it one time, go back and do it again so that that way they get to try being more clear and that usually Shows success might not be 100% but at a definitely be better than the first time. So that is the jacket drill, my friends. It is awesome for good clear communication training for your dive professionals. Use it next time and hey, if you want put it in a staff meeting, it’s another great thing to do during a staff meetings and that way your whole staff gets better at communications as well. Enjoy Industry News In diving industry news, we have the open registration for the DEMA Show. DEMA Show 2019 we’ll be in Orlando, Florida at the Orange County Convention Center November 13th through 16th. Now if you have not been to a DEMA Show, you have got to go. If you are a dive professional, this is the top trade Show for all of us. Now why is that? Because there’s going to be over 600 booths from anything of equipment manufacturers, travel destinations, apparel service providers, training agencies, you name it, they are there and you are going to be alongside about 10,000 of your industry colleagues, other dive professionals that are going there to learn more about the industry, the latest and greatest and the latest and greatest in new equipment. And then of course all of the agencies and specialty areas in our sport. It’s all there. It’s on showcase on that DEMA Show floor, but then there’s also this whole piece of educational professional development sessions. We’re talking over 250 different seminars that go on, that talk about everything from industry trends and economic topics and business strategies, technical training, all kinds of training actually. And so you get all of this from the different agencies, manufacturers, exhibitors, and then DEMA themselves also puts on a lot of the education and resources. So it’s just fantastic. This is the world’s only international trade, only event for diving and action watersports and travel pro’s. So you just got to be a part of it. It is absolutely fantastic. I’ll be there, connect with me. Uh, you can connect with me on the DEMA app. There’s even a Show app that helps you navigate, helps you with your scheduling and you know what to see when it’s, it’s awesome. So we can connect on there and I’d love to meet many of you in person. So again, that is open and I’m putting it in here now for industry news because basically you’ve got a month until the Show price goes up for your registration. So get it in, get it in early. And the other thing that you want to do to register early for this is that there are the room blocks that go along with the DEMA Show at the host hotels. Those usually go quickly because after an entire day, walking that Show floor, it’s awesome to just literally walk across the street and go to the host hotels. So look up that at the DEMAShow.com. So www.DEMAShow.com and look into registering for that. Okay, so there you have it. Episode two is in the books. Thanks everybody for being a part of this. I hope that you’re getting value from this episode. You’ll see that other episodes will be more business heavy, like the next one we’ve got coming up. And then there’ll be some that are risk management heavy, or teaching heavy. So each episode will be different in its content, but in all of them, hopefully you will pull value and resources that can actually help you grow as a diving professional. So thanks again everybody. It’s great to have you here. We’ll see you in the next episode of the dive locker podcast. Take care and safe diving my friends. Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to leave a comment or suggestion for this podcast? Simply record yourself below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The Dive Locker podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes , Google Play Music , or Stitcher to get automatic updates. The post 002 In-Service Training, The Jacket Drill appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Welcome to The Dive Locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business. I’m your host Tec Clark and welcome to the very first episode of The Dive Locker podcast. I am so excited to be here and I’m so excited that you are here. Welcome. You know it was put on my heart to create a podcast that was dedicated to dive professionals, divemasters, assistant instructors, instructors, instructor trainers, course directors, faculty. It can be also for dive center owners and managers and operators of dive boats and vessels. Look, if you’re in the diving industry as a leader or a professional, this podcast is for you. Now, what is it that makes this special and why is it relevant to you? It’s because we are going to go over news and information that is for you. Now I’m not talking press releases. There will be some press releases because there are some things that are really good to know in our industry, but not every press release is going to make it onto this podcast. Why? Because frankly, there are some things that just really don’t need to be expressed to you as a dive professional. It’s need to know, and so if you don’t need to know it, it’s not going to be on here. What we want to do is focus on things that are going to make you better at what you do, and so in this pursuit of excellence, we are going to bring on all kinds of news information and cutting edge topics. We’re going to talk about what is the latest and greatest, but look back at history. What were things that we learned from the past. We’re going to get into even controversial topics at times, things that can be debated and argued and hey look, we’re going to go over that balancing act of the good and the bad of things as well. We’re going to talk to guests and have them come from different agencies, organizations, manufacturers, different businesses. We’re going to have experts on. They’re giving you their best practices because that is how we are all going to flourish in many, many different areas of what we do in this profession, in this industry, is to hear the best practices and to learn that from the people that are doing it well. And Hey, we may even bring in people from outside the diving industry. If maybe you had expertise in business and it’s a recreational pursuit or whatnot. Hey, we can learn, right? So here’s another thing that’s going to be a unique about this podcast. It’s going to be agency neutral. Now we get really worked up in our industry about our training agencies, right? And we’ve got all this affiliation to one agency or another, or maybe you’ve got a couple under your belt or so forth. The deal is if you’re basing your view on another agency because of, let’s say the dive shop down the road, and the dive shop owner that you don’t particularly care for, or the way that they’re doing things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an agency issue, right? So what we want to do here is we want to bring agencies to the table so that you’ll hear from training directors, from different agencies that will say, “Hey, here’s what we got going on new”. And you can make your opinions and judgments and get information right from the agency’s mouth. And so that is a really great thing to do. We need to avoid some of the rumor mill that goes on in our industry, right? And you know what I’m talking about? So to hear it in this podcast, from the best of the best in our industry and of the agencies and organizations and manufacturers driving the industry is going to be a really key component of this podcast. So what is the episode’s format’s going to be like, well, what we’re going to do is give this to you every week. So every week you’re going to get a 30 minute episode, approximately 30 minutes so that it is timely and it is bite size and to the point, so you’re on your two mile walk or run or whatever. You can listen to a 30 minute segment on your two mile walk or at the gym or in your car commute to work or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. So again, every week we’re going to be launching and it will be 30 minute episodes. We’re going to have different segments. And those segments are going to be all kinds of topics within our industry that relate to you as a dive pro. We’re going to talk about training, we’re going to talk about teaching, we’re going to talk about risk management, and of course the business of diving. We’ll bring in travel. We’re in everything that really does matter to you. And those segments are going to be such a vital part of this. And guess what? Some of those things we’re going to wind up hearing from you. And I’m going to tell you about that in a moment, what that means for you to be involved in these. But there will be segments that come from you that you have suggested to us and so forth. So I’ll, I’ll talk about that later. And then finally, you’ll also hear from sponsors. You know, it costs money to put on a podcast. And to do that we need sponsors. So you will hear from sponsors that we have occasionally and episodes and that is a really appreciated thing to keep us live and going strong for years to come. So let’s talk about why this show. Well, I absolutely love our industry. I’ve made it a career. I’ve been a pro for 30 years. The thing is that as an industry we are competing with other outdoor recreations and as the consumer gets to be a little bit more finicky about all the different things that they can do and with health being at an all time high and the abilities of people, they are exploring more options than ever for outdoor recreation, we need to be competitive in that market. Underwater exploration is awesome, but we need to make it better. And how we do that is located in the way that we teach, the way that we conduct ourselves in business practices, the way that we handle risk. All of these things are going to be so important to how we flourish as an industry. And that starts with the frontline people. So what do I mean by frontline? Well, that’s going to be you, the dive pro, our retailers, our dive operators. And here’s something to think about. According to DEMA, recreational scuba diving and snorkeling contribute about $11 billion to the US Gross Domestic Product. Now that’s a big industry, but our frontline forces, those retailers and dive operators I have been talking about, you professionals rarely have any business training whatsoever. And so you hear that our sport comes from one that is kind of a grassroots and organically built industry where you have people that are so passionate about sharing the underwater world with others that they become a pro. And they do that in a supervisory capacity like divemasters or an instructional capacity like instructors. And then what they rise up into saying, “hey, let’s look at doing this full time”. And so that might be as a full time independent instructor or hang a shingle and get a dive shop or a dive boat or a shop with a boat, a dive center. And so when we start to look at how these businesses grow, our frontline folks are the ones that are putting this all out there to the consumer. And as my friend Darcy Kieran says, having a dive center is like having six businesses in one. And if you think about it, it’s very true because we have to be able to serve the needs of diving and we have to do that in so many facets. And so how do we do that? Well is going to be one of the keys to the show. We’re also going to talk about the risk management side of our industry. Now let’s think about this. Our professional liability insurance is rising every year. The cost of teaching and supervising scuba impacts all of us. Now, why is this? Well, frankly it’s because there are claims and these claims are getting paid out and these payouts are affecting the bottom line of the insurance companies that we do our business with. And so as claims arise, the cost of our professional liability policies is rising. So what does that mean folks? It’s simple. It means tightening up on risk management principles and techniques that will make diving safe and will make training safe and dive supervision safe. Most dive professionals think they are doing good at risk management principles, but obviously there are issues. So what we want to do is uncover some of the best practices of risk management so that we not only can be better ourselves, but if we see things that are just going a little wonky out there with other people, hey look, we need to bring that up. If we don’t police ourselves, then someone will, or teaching scuba in this industry is just going to be cost prohibitive. Again, we can do better and we will through strategies in this podcast and also we can be better at our teaching techniques. A new diver thinks their instructor hung the moon, but how many times have we seen that a new diver that can’t equalize or they have no neutral buoyancy whatsoever or they are 10 pounds over-weighted come on, we can do better than this! You see, we need to share the best practices that make students great products of our services (teaching). So how we can do it better is going to be a big part of this podcast. Not only is it in the pool, it’s in the open water, it’s on the dive boat and it’s in the dive shop, on the show floor. These are the many things that are going to be a part of this podcast. So who am I the one that’s leading this as your host? Well, many of you know me from the diving industry. Many of you know me from the League of Extraordinary Divers Podcast and for those that I don’t know, I’m pleased to meet you. Tec is my nickname. Thomas E. Clark, Tec has nothing to do with technical diving or technology or anything like that. It’s just my nickname. And I began diving here in Lauderdale by the Sea at the age of 12. Then I went on to get my PADI open water and advanced open water certifications and promptly went to the University of Florida. And in my sophomore year I had to drop a golf class. There was a table, a drop-add table. And there were some instructors there and they said, “hey, are you to diver? I said, “yes, I am”. They said, “what level of diver are you?” I said, “I’m an advanced diver”, and they said, “all right, well we’ve got a course that’s called assistant instructor. It’s your next level up. Why don’t you take it and it’s two credit hours.” So sure enough, I joined up, took the class and I joined the University of Florida Academic Diving Program and that semester I learned all there was about academic diving and being an assistant instructor. Loved it and promptly went onto my instructor training course. I became a NAUI instructor, a YMCA instructor, a CMAS instructor, and a PADI instructor all at the University of Florida Academic Diving Program. And that was 1988, a long time ago. And so I was able to teach in auditoriums. I spoke at YMCA conventions, NAUI events, I began writing for Currents – that’s the YMCA’s publication and Sources.  NAUI’s publication.  And that really got me to a point where we started to realize as young men and women at the University of Florida that we were doing some special things and we really were passionate about teaching. Well, my mom got cancer and I decided to move back home to be with her. When I was back home in Fort Lauderdale, I joined up with a local dive shop called Orbit Marine Sports in Pompano Beach. I was divemastering and I was instructing and working the dive shop, but there was more that I wanted. I was giving up cave diving, I couldn’t cave dive anymore. So I was kinda missing my adrenaline and cool stuff to do. So I joined up with the Broward Sheriff’s Office Dive Rescue Team as a volunteer. And so with that I was able to experience the challenging side of public safety diving, but it was also absolutely fascinating, especially for a 21 year old kid. And so I did that for a couple of years and my mom got good. She was all better with her cancer and I got an invite from the University of Florida to come back and be the managing director of the Academic Diving Program. So I did that and finished my time there while I graduated spent many years at the University of Florida Academic Diving Program and then I received an internship to the YMCA Scuba Program and I moved to Atlanta and went to the headquarters of YMCA Scuba. And there I was able to be an intern, then roll into a consultant, then roll into the assistant director, then roll into the national director all within a two year period. And that was a rich time being with the YMCA allowed me to go to dive centers all over the country, even internationally and teach and learn from others and visit dive centers as well as YMCAs and colleges and universities and their different dive programs. I was also able to be a part of the RSTC the Recreational Scuba Training Council. That is the organization that’s a secretary of ANSI. You’ve heard of ANSI before, American National Standards Institute. That’s, you know, you see an ANSI sticker on a bike helmet, right? That’s because there are standards in these type of recreational pursuits. And so the RSTC is who creates the minimum standards in our diving industry. So I was able to serve alongside of SSI, PADI, IDEA, and PDIC. It was a fantastic, fantastic way to see the industry from kind of one of the highest levels of gathering together and creating industry standards. At that same time, I got into freediving. Now I always had been a freediver. But at this time it was really neat because we were with CMAS not only at University of Florida, but also YMCA. The YMCA Scuba program was a sanctioning body for CMAS here in the United States. And with that, CMAS was also doing records for freediving. So I became a freediving judge with CMAS. And my passion just exploded as I was being a judge for record competitions for people like Tanya Streeter and Mehgan Heaney-Grier and Alejandro Ravello and really great upcoming freedivers at the time that were setting national and world records. Well that led to creating the US  Freediving Team. So Mehgan Heaney-Grier and I in 1996 created the first United States Freediving Team and it was great to see that team flourish, especially the women getting a Gold at the Pacific Cup of freediving in the early 2000’s. I also had a passion for safety and so teaming up with Divers Alert Network and becoming a trainer with them was really important to the mission of dive safety and educating others and higher level areas of rescue and risk management and first aid and treatment. Well that passion rolled into me moving back down to South Florida and becoming a forensic dive accident investigator once my time was done with the YMCA. This was a unique area to be a part of. Yes, this is the CSI of the underwater world. So forensic dive accident investigators work with the insurance companies and attorneys with the insurance companies to process claims and to investigate those claims and to see what can be done and should be done with the dive professionals in the payouts and the claims and potential litigation that goes with that. A really interesting, sometimes very dark side of our sport. Then I was able to join up with Pro Dive, one of the legendary instructor training institutions in the United States and I was able to be a part of a couple of different ownerships of Pro Dive and really look at that company as it grew into a new era. At that same time, I also was able to launch a ministry in diving. Reef Ministries is a ministry that lookes at the underwater world as the handiwork of God. And so growing up I really had not much of a faith, but getting older and having a wife and kids and just looking at the blessings and the beauty of the underwater world. All of that together just really touched me. And yes, I had a conversion experience and just really resonated with my life as a Christian became something really, really big and important to me. So my faith rose and I decided to turn the gifts that God had given me and diving and kind of help others with that. So I was able to take out church groups and homeschoolers and really explore the underwater world as the handiwork of God. And that was with Reef Ministries and reefministries.com is still going well today. And then I was able to join up with Nova Southeastern University. Now I took a small gig with them to teach some lessons on the side and all of a sudden the President of the University, Dr. George Hanbury, needed a refresher. So I gave him a refresher and at in his early seventies Dr. Hanbury, I put him through the paces and at the end of our refresher he said, “I learned more in my refresher with you than I learned in my beginning courses. What is that about?” I said, “it’s academic diving and that’s what I did for 10 years at the University of Florida Academic Diving Program. And by the way, Nova Southeastern University with their brilliant oceanographic center should also have an academic diving program too. He said, “write me a proposal.” And seven months later we launched the Nova Southeastern University Academic Diving Program. And that’s what I also do to this day. Now I don’t say all of this to toot my own horn, what I’m doing to kind of give you my background is to share with you the great experience that I have in this industry has many different legs to it. And seeing the industry from that view allowed me to see what was going on in many corners of the industry, not only the challenges that we constantly hear about, but also the best practices. And so what I want to do is bring the connections and experiences that I’ve made over a 30 year career in this industry and bring this to you in a podcast that highlights the best practices in our industry and that will make all of us better. That will rise the tide which rises all ships. And so that is one of the big, big, big things about this podcast is how we can do best practices. So I’m going to invite many people that I’ve had the blessing and honor of working with through the years and being in, in different organizations with, and being on different committees with, and they are also going to be a part of this show. So that’s what this is all about. Best Practices. And by being an active listener yourself, you are part of The Dive Locker Nation. You will be a better dive pro. You’ll be better at teaching techniques, better at risk management and better at dive business. Now remember what I said earlier about how you can be involved? Well, this is where you can simply go to www.scubaguru.com and at scubaguru.com you will find the section for The Dive Locker podcast. When you get onto that page for the dive locker podcast, you’re going to see a microphone icon. Those microphones will be different topics. They could be things that are just about a tip or a technique on a certain area. It could be on what you want to hear for future episodes. It could be about encouragement for the show or what we could do to improve. Just click on the microphones and start talking. You might be on the podcast! Again, that’s over at www.scubaguru.com The Dive Locker is what you’re looking for. So again, my friends, this is the inaugural episode. I am so excited that you’re here. I’m so excited that we’re launching. There’s more great things to come. This is just the preface of what it is and what the show is about. Next episodes, you’re going to hear all kinds of things that we’ve got lined up for you to be better as a dive pro. So again, I thank you for being here. I thank you for being a part of The Dive Locker Nation and I look forward to serving you every week. So thank you everybody and we’ll see you next time. Take good care and safe diving my friends. Hi Tec, it’s Stephen Frink. I enjoyed the podcast we worked on together for your League of Extraordinary Divers project and now very much looking forward to The Dive Locker. Good luck. Hi, this is Dan Orr of Dan Orr Consulting and I just wanted to say best of luck to Tec Clark and his new podcast, The Dive Locker. I have no doubt that it’ll be both enjoyable and extremely informative. Tec, it’s Mermaid Linden from Mermaids in Motion. I just want to congratulate you on the new ScubaGuru podcast. I’m very much looking forward to listening to it and I think it’s going to be “mermific”. Cheers. This is Grant Graves of Soggy Science and Pod Aquatics. I want to wish Tec an amazing and successful run with The Dive Locker. Good luck buddy. Hey TC. It’s Kell from Rainbow Reef. Having been shoved into a lot of lockers as a school boy I’m a little nervous about the new podcast, but I know you’re going to kick butt! Break a leg brother. Hey there. This is Michael Feld from Oceanblue Dive in New York City, wishing Tec Clark the best of luck with his new podcast. Hey Tec, Ryan over at Born of Water and Spirit Apparel. I just wanted to say congratulations and good luck on the new podcast and I’m looking forward to listening to the new series. Hey Tec, this Jack Snively at NAUI headquarters in Tampa, Florida. I was really excited when I heard about your new podcast for dive professionals. I have no doubt that you’re going to touch many lives for the better. Thanks buddy. Good luck. Hey this is Rachel Cushman, your current Scuba Queen USA and ADSO at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. I can’t wait for this new podcast and to listen in on what’s new in The Dive Locker. Good luck! Aloha. This is Keller Laros, the Manta Man of Kona, Hawaii, and I want to wish Tec Clark great luck with his new podcast, The Dive Locker. Be sure to check it out. Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to leave a comment or suggestion for this podcast? Simply record yourself below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The Dive Locker podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes , Google Play Music , or Stitcher to get automatic updates. The post 001 Introduction to The Dive Locker Podcast appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Doug McNeese – President of SSI’s International Business Development In this podcast episode I chat with Doug McNeese. Doug is President of Scuba Schools International (SSI)’s International Business Development where he travels the world educating dive centers on how to be more successful in their businesses. Well how does one get to do that? It helps when your father owned a dive center! As you’ll hear in this episode Doug was not only raised working in his father’s dive center, he eventually bought it from his father and opened three more highly successful stores called simply, The Dive Shop. Doug went on to purchase the National Association of Scuba Diving Schools (NASDS). He made remarkable improvements to NASDS and then saw the opportunity to merge with SSI and nearly a decade later he purchased SSI. And most recently he sold SSI to the HEAD Group where it is flourishing and he is still leading professionals with his secrets to success learned from his early days. Doug is highly respected in the diving industry and he was awarded the DEMA Reaching out award in 2017. And as you’ll hear he loves to give back to the industry and he has done this through his efforts with both the Platinum Pro Foundation and Sea of Change Foundation. Items in this Podcast Learning to dive as a 10 year old in 1962Worked at his father’s dive shop called The Dive ShopPurchasing the National Association of Scuba Diving Schools (NASDS)Merging NASDS with Scuba Schools International (SSI)SSI and the HEAD GroupPassion for diving leads to a passion for the business of divingAssisting divers in needAdvice for divers Resources Scuba Schools International Platinum Pro Foundation Nomination Form Sea of Change Foundation Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 023 : Doug McNeese – President of Scuba Schools International (SSI) Business Development appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Today we have a mentor of mine, Dr. Alex Brylske.  Now what makes him so special is his absolute passion for the health of underwater environments.  Most recently he was Professor of Marine Science & Technology at Florida Keys Community College.    While teaching he was also Senior Editor of Dive Training Magazine a position he held for 24 years, where he wrote outstanding articles on all topics in diving.  Before all that was his time at PADI headquarters where he was their Educational Program Development Manager.  Alex implemented the instructor training model currently in use today at PADI.  He also was primary editor for both the PADI Encyclopedia of Recreational Diving and the PADI Divemaster Manual.  In 2012 Alex won the prestigious DAN Rolex Diver of the Year Award, and in that same year he published one of my favorite books in the diving industry, The Complete Diver: The History, Science and Practice of Scuba Diving. Now, Alex is promoting his new company Ocean Education International where he is focusing on environmental education and professional development services for the marine tourism industry, specializing in the recreational scuba sector. Their mission is to assist the marine tourism industry maximize profitability through increased environmental awareness and social responsibility. In pursuing this mission they hope to realize their ultimate vision – to make marine tourism an important and positive force in ocean conservation. Items In This Episode Growing up in Chesapeake Bay, taught himself how to diveJoined a dive rescue unit at 16 years of ageDiving Sombrero Reef in 1968 defined his lifeBecame a commercial diver after collegeBecame a YMCA Scuba Instructor in 1972 and a PADI Instructor in 1973Shipwrecked on a Spanish presidential retreatBest diving South CaicosMoved to San Diego, Al Hornsby offered him a job as PADI’s Training Facilities Projects CoordinatorMoved to Florida and developed Underwater Careers International with Divers UnlimitedWent back to PADI as Educational Program Development Manager and restructured instructor trainingDeveloped the Instructor Development Program at Pro DiveBecame Senior Editor of Dive Training Magazine Professor at Florida Keys Community College Creating Ocean Education International teaching Sustainable Marine TourismThe Compleat GogglerUnderstanding shifting baselines of environmental observationsSustainability of ocean resources and sustainable tourismWhat are Citizen Scientists? Resources Ocean Education International Dive Training Magazine ECO Pro Environment Instructor Development Course Reef Check Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 022 : Alex Brylske – Legendary Scientific Diver, Author and Educator appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Mandy-Rae Krack – World Record Freediver, Stunt Woman and Speaker Mandy-Rae Krack was born in 1974, and took to the water right away.  At the age of 9 she was a competitive synchronized swimmer. At the age of 15, she became a certified Scuba diver. After high school she became a PADI Instructor and then ultimately a PADI Course Director.  In 2000 she was introduced to the sport of freediving and that same year competed and her women’s team placed 3rd in the world at an international competition.  The funny thing is she did all this growing up in Canada. Mandy-Rae Krack has gone on to capture twelve National records and seven World records. She’s a six time member of Team Canada who has taken two first place finishes and three third place finishes in AIDA International competitions. In 2006 she and her husband and trainer, Kirk Krack, worked with Magician David Blaine on his ABC special Drowned Alive and then trained and assisted him with a World Record Oxygen Breath-hold live on the Oprah show.   Mandy-Rae was also part of the Black Ops team that helped uncover the slaughter of dolphins in Japan for the 2010 Academy Award winning documentary The Cove.  Just wait till you hear her stories of records, competitions and adventures – you’ll see why she is such a legend and why she is so inspirational. Items In This Podcast Certified at age 15 in Alberta, CanadaBecoming a PADI Instructor helped her with public speakingManaged dive center in Vancouver Became one of first technical diving instructors in CanadaTried freediving and became addicted to the sportCo-founded Performance Freediving InternationalPart of Canadian National Women’s Freediving Team, their first year the team took 3rd placeMandy’s Static Apnea World Record a 6:16 breath-hold!Freediving with Humpback whalesHarrowing 90 meter record attemptPromoting coral safe sunscreensThe perils of filming The Cove Academy Award-Winning DocumentaryFavorite diving destinations: Vancouver IslandRiver Snorkeling with SalmonRespect for Umberto PelizariProfessional speaking with WWE, ComicCon, Canadian Oceans2020Ambassador for Fast and Female Resources Mandy-Rae’s Website Performance Freediving International Fast and Female Stream 2 Sea Coral Safe Sunscreen The Cove Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures Thanks For Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 021 : Mandy-Rae Krack – World Record Freediver & Speaker appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Les Stroud – Survivorman Producer, Actor & Musician Today we have a rather well-known guest, the Survivorman himself Les Stroud.  Now for some of you, this is a household name – a celebrity in fact – as youve watched his many TV episodes on the Discovery Channel.  But for those who don’t know of Les, he originated the entire genre of Survival TV by taking cameras and going to remote locations around the world filming himself surviving in these locations.  He’d document his experience and at the same time teach how to build shelters, start fires, gather indigenous foods, improvise weapons, fashion clothing, etc.  But this is not an Eagle Scout grown up with a camera, Les conceived each episode, researched, narrated, filmed, edited, and even produced the music for each episode.  And we are talking over 70 Survivorman episodes in deserts, the arctic, the ocean, deserted islands, canyons, swamps, rainforests – the list goes on and on AND he’s demonstrating survival unique to each location.  I find this type of television extremely compelling, it is edutainment – education and entertainment together.  By the way, many others find it outstanding as well.  Survivorman is one of the highest rated shows in the history of OLN Canada, the Science Channel US and Discovery Channel US and remains the highest rated repeat show on the Discovery Channel.  Les has won numerous awards including Best Writer (twice) and Best Photographer from the Canadian Screen Awards, and he’s won the Executive Producers Award for Excellence at the Lewiston Film Festival. But that’s not all, Les is a speaker and a New York Times bestselling author.  He has three books Survive! – Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere–Alive!, Will to Live, and Beyond Survivorman .  And he was nominated for Best Travel Writer at the Canadian National Magazine awards. And if that’s not extraordinary enough, Les is also an accomplished musician.  Not only has Les written all the theme songs for his TV series and scored several independent films, but he’s recorded four CDs.  Les is also revered worldwide for his iconic harmonica playing.  Les’s songwriting style runs eclectic, from art-folk-roots rock to contemporary art rock. Les is a proud member of the prestigious Explorers Club.  He contributes to dozens of charities and benefits, is an ambassador for Shelterbox, and is an advanced survival trainer for the Canadian Military Armed Forces, as well as he sits on the board of advisors for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Organization. Items in This Podcast Recorded on location at Captain Hiram’s Sebastian, FloridaRaised in Toronto CanadaInspired by the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and TarzanBecame a survival instructor in his 20’sBlended his talents in video, music and survival techniques to create SurvivormanSurvivorman was the first of the “Survival Genre” of TV showsHow he created his unique camera workWhat actually caused Les to get scuba certifiedSeason 2 “South Pacific” stranded at sea when scuba diving episodeFavorite diving locationsThe importance of conservationTips for diversAggressor Trips with Les StroudHis CDs his music his messages in his musicHis take on creative pursuits and releasing energy into the world – this is awesome!His upcoming Podcast Resources Les Stroud’s Webpage Les Stroud’s YouTube Channel Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Fleet Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 020 : Les Stroud – Producer, Actor & Musician appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Cristina Zenato – Shark Professional, Cave Explorer and Conservationist On today’s episode I chat with one of the most influential women underwater. Italian born Cristina Zenato traveled to the Bahamas to take a beginner diving class, and that’s where she fell in love with diving and with the Bahamas. Eventually Cristina became a dive pro. Her credentials include PADI Course Director, NSS-CDS Full Cave Instructor, and TDI Extended Range and Advanced Nitrox with Decompression Procedures Instructor. This helps her explore the many cave systems in the Bahamas – yes there are cave systems in the Bahamas! She even speaks five languages. But what Cristina is most noted for is her expertise with handling Caribbean Reef Sharks on special shark dives in the Bahamas. She has a special way with sharks, a gift, whereby sharks are so comfortable with her they literally come lay in her lap. Due to this intimacy she has been able to study sharks and assist other researchers in studying shark behavior. And this closeness has even allowed her to remove fishing hooks from their jaws. No wonder Cristina has been inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame and the Explorers Club, as well as being a recipient of the Platinum Pro 5000 Award. Items In This Podcast Taking scuba classes on vacation in the BahamasWorked at a Bahamian resort just to scuba dive800 logged dives per yearFrom a love of diving to a love of protectingCristina’s mentor “Uncle Ben” RoseBahamian cave and cavern systemsBahamas National Trust 2020Shark handling with Caribbean Reef SharksWhy she is able to remove hooks from Caribbean Reef SharksOctopus giving birthFavorite diving locationsTips for diversSpeaking at DC Dive Show and Beneath The SeaHer coursesNew not-for-profit – People of The Water Resources 10 Mistakes Divers Make and How to Prevent Them POWnonprofit.org cristinazenato.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Fleet Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 019 : Cristina Zenato – Shark Professional & Conservationist appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Dr. Guy Harvey – Artist, Scientist, Angler and Conservationist In this podcast episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with Guy Harvey.  There is no other artist who is better known than Guy Harvey for underwater images. And, there is no other artist who has made greater contributions to ocean conservation than Guy Harvey. Guy Harvey is an artist, scientist, angler, conservationist and extraordinary diver. Growing up in Jamaica, Guy spent many hours fishing and diving with his father along the Island’s south coast. He was obsessed with the creatures of the sea and began drawing pictures of the many different fish he observed. From his early inspirations, Guy’s natural gift to recreate marine life has propelled him from Professor of Marine Biology to a Wildlife Artist and Photographer. In 1985, he depicted Ernest Hemingway’s famous fishing story “The Old Man & the Sea” through a series of 44 original pen and ink drawings and displayed them at an exhibition in Jamaica. Based on the positive response he received at the show, Guy began painting full time and by 1988 was providing custom artwork for use on a variety of products. Guy began to travel the world to gain more knowledge of the habits and activities of marine wildlife. He became an avid scuba diver and skilled underwater photographer. He pioneered a technique of diving and photographing free-swimming billfish. His personal observations made during these diving expeditions have better enabled him to capture the detail in his paintings that contributes to the popularity of his work. Guy’s artwork can be found in art exhibits, stores, galleries, restaurants and at fishing tournaments. He makes appearances at store openings as well as public appearances for a variety of environmental causes. His passion for the beauty and wonder of the underwater world has driven Dr. Guy Harvey to be a leading conservationist and advocate for the protection of our environment. Guy dedicates much of his talent, time and resources to programs that protect our oceans, fish population and reef systems. The Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University and The Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation have taken on a leadership role in providing the scientific information necessary to understand and protect the world’s fish resources and biodiversity from continued decline. Items in this Podcast Growing up in JamaicaFishing at an early ageArtistic ability at an early ageFirst scuba training BSAC in Montego BayBecoming a marine scientist Aberdeen University Scotland and Univ. of West Indies in Kingston JamaicaFavorite diving locationsTalents of spearfishing translate to talents of an underwater photographerDiving around the world inspired many works of artEastern Pacific versus Western Pacific in variety of fishesHow consumerism is changing fish stocksLionfish cullingAggressor Liveaboard, Gardens of the Queen, CubaBillfish Conservation ActOrganized shark divingAdvice for divers Resources Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University Dr. Mahmood Sivji Nova Southeastern University IGFA International Game Fish Association Nolan Godwin, young artist ghritracking.org GuyHarvey.com Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Fleet Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD018: Guy Harvey – Marine Artist and Conservationist appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Brandi Mueller – Underwater Photographer and Author of The Airplane Graveyard In this podcast I chat with Brandi Mueller.  Brandi began her diving career at the age of 15 as a foreign exchange student in New Zealand.  When she went to graduate school in Florida, she longed for the opportunity to travel the world and scuba dive.  Soon she discovered Action Quest and was required to become a diving instructor to get the job.  She did, and the rest is history. Brandi taught and traveled the British Virgin Islands with Action Quest.  When her gig in the BVI ended, she was hired onto the Kona Aggressor Yacht.  There she learned underwater photography and honed her skills by learning from photo pro’s and guests.  When she returned to her graduate studies – this time in Hawaii – she worked for a dive center and led exotic dive trips through the store.  Eventually, Brandi landed a job captaining a ferry on a US Army base in Kwajalein Atoll.  There she documented an underwater graveyard of over 150 World War II US military aircraft.  As an Ikelite Ambassador and photo pro, Brandi used her photography skills and has just published her first book entitled The Airplane Graveyard: The Forgotten WWII Warbirds of Kwajalein Atoll. Items in this Podcast Learning to dive as a foreign exchange studentBecoming a scuba instructor in collegeInstructing and traveling the worldPhoto skills aboard Kona AggressorFavorite diving locationsThe military history of Truk (Chuuk) Lagoon and Kwajalein AtollSolo diving with a Whale SharkAdvice for divers Resources Action Quest Kona Aggressor Ikelite Ambassador The Airplane Graveyard: The Forgotten WWII Warbirds of Kwajalein Atoll Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Fleet Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 017 : Brandi Mueller – Underwater Photographer and Author appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Dick Rutkowski  – Father of Enriched Air Nitrox & Hyperbaric Medical Training In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with Dick Rutkowski, legendary pioneer of Enriched Air Nitrox and Hyperbaric Medicine. Dick is a pioneer in the field of hyperbaric medicine, diving medicine and breathing gases for the treatment of divers and clinical patients. He has taught over 8000 medical and diving professionals worldwide in his clinical and diving medical seminars through his company Hyperbarics International. Dick joined the Navy in 1950, became a radio operator, and was assigned in both the polar regions of Antarctica and the Canadian northwest territories. He then went on to be with the Environmental Science Services Administration, which became NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he was part of the NOAA Experimental Diving Lab. In the 1980’s Dick “retired” to Key Largo, but there is nothing retired about him. He has continued to consult and teach diving and clinical hyperbaric medical programs, gases and other life-support systems for the undersea world. He still continues to do science, education, consulting and inventing to this day. Dick has been the past president of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, and the co-founder of ANDI (American Nitrox Divers International) and IANTD (International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers). He also organized and founded diving safety organizations such as the Florida Underwater Council and the Society of Diving Safety. He has won numerous awards including a NOAA Public Service Award, the Craig Hoffman Memorial/Charles W. Shilling Award by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, the Dr. Joe Bauer Memorial Award by the History of Diving Museum, the DEMA Reaching Out Award, the NAUI Hall of Honor Award and NAUI Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also been inducted into the DEMA Hall of Fame, the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, and as a Fellow Emeritus in the Explorers Club. Dick even has a glacier in the Antarctic named after him – the Rutkowski Glacier!     Items in this Podcast US Navy Radio School Antarctica in 1958 South Pole 90 South Commercial diving school in 1965, Divers Training Academy PADI, NAUI, YMCA instructor (oldest active PADI Instructor #536) The Rutkowski Glacier 50 steps around the world First scuba dive in Pensacola How Nitrox became used in recreational diving How green and yellow became the colors for Nitrox PADI chamber tour specialty “Science always wins over BS” Resources Hyperbarics International 2012 DEMA Reaching Out Award Documentary International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame IANTD NAUI PADI NOAA Diving Manual Stephen Frink Spencer Slate Bob Croft Sharky’s Sponsor Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Fleet Thanks for Listening! Thank you for joining me again. Do you want to give a shout out to our guest on this podcast? Leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Please leave a review for The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! And, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. The post LXD 016 : Dick Rutkowski – Father of Enriched Air Nitrox & Hyperbaric Medical Training appeared first on ScubaGuru.