Thalassamania
Senior Member

With my wife of 20 years and our 12 year old Conch (who was born when we lived in Key West when I worked there with aquaCorps and Billy Deans), I recently moved to the Big Island of Hawai'i.

Diving has been a big part of my life since 1956. My Dad was then an archaeologist. He got the idea to recover Babylonian artifacts from a barge that sank in the mid 19th century where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers come together after seeing Cousteau's Silent World. He bought two tanks, two regulators, and a copy of the Science of Skin and Scuba (several later editions of which I was honored to contribute to), and we learned how to dive. The planned Fertile Crescent dives never happened, but I continued to dive recreationally (lakes in New York, the New England Coast, North Carolina, Florida, California).

While in high school I joined a group that styled itself Beta Oceanographic Research Inc. It was a scientifically minded dive club that had an agreement with the California State Parks people and the Pt. Lobos administration that in return for mapping and doing some biological and geological baseline work they could have unlimited access to the park.

U.C. Berkeley was where I attended university. I had an ideal part time job for a university student ... graveyard shift in a quiet morgue, where I prepped bodies for Coroner's Office. This led to a job as a phlebotomist at a local hospital. The guy who ran the hospital lab was a PADI Instructor and I became his AI (this is about 1970). At the same time I became involved in the Research Diver Training Program at Cal. I took the 100 hrs. Research Diving Course in the spring quarter, did underwater research in Central America over the summer, was an Assistant Team Leader (AI) in the course in the fall, and a Team Leader (Instructor) for the next course. I remained active, both teaching and conducting research until I received my degree in Zoology. My senior thesis was on the foraging behavior of Brant's Cormorant, having spent a year free diving in the area of the Monterey Breakwater to observe the birds. Yes ... I was an underwater birdwatcher.

A major oceanographic institute accepted me into its Ph.D. Program. There I continued my research diving, but there was no formal research diving program. In 1975 I attended a two-week NAUI ITC at the University of Michigan run by Dr. Lee Somers. I returned to my home institution and began teaching other students the 100 hour course I learned during my undergraduate days. To make a long story short, I wound up as the Diving Safety Officer and had a chance to do some interesting things and make what where, I hope, some small contributions to the diving communities I belonged to.

My certifications come from many institutions of higher learning, and include all of the levels up to and including a 200 foot card, as well as endorsements for surface supplied, NITROX, mixed-gas, rebreather, chamber operator, instructor, operation supervisor, etc. I've been an aquanaut (habitat based saturation) and a deep submersible pilot.

The American Academy of Underwater Sciences, is an organization that I am a founding member of. I served it as a national officer, and helped write its standards; I was the only member of both the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society and National Science Foundation panels on Shipboard Diving Safety and I was invited to provide testimony before a number of governmental groups including the Department of Labor, the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere and the Vice President's Committee on Governmental Deregulation. I was in on the early days of the formation of the technical diving community as an editor for aquaCorps Magazine and both Registrar and Program Chairman of the Tek Conferences. I was elected a National Fellow of the Explorers Club and an Associate Member of the Boston Sea Rovers.

I staffed and directed many NAUI ITCs, served on NAUI's Technical Advisory Group and in the mid 1980s, at the request of the Executive Director, I revised NAUI's standards. I was awarded NAUI's highest honor (Outstanding Service Award) four times.

I'm now semi-retired and work as a consulting taxonomist for a photo agency that represents twenty or so of the top nature (including underwater) photographers in the world. I continue my interests in underwater science; I teach a few private programs each year and write. I am currently working on a book addressing research diver training from both an historical and practical perspective. I serve on our local school's School Community Committee and on committees that are develping Voluntary Recreational Diving and Wildlife Interaction Standards for Hawai'i.