A return visit, 20 years on, became a conversation about change, responsibility and what may be left to protect.
Jim Standing, co-founder of Fourth Element
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The first reaction was instant and entirely human.
“Gosh… I look so young.”
Jim Standing had just revisited the old interview and profile we had published in 2005. His co-founder, fellow director and visionary, Paul Strike (“Strikey”), had expressed pretty much the same sentiment when we put the old article in front of him. Both men, who built Fourth Element from the ground up, were looking back, not just at themselves, but at the early articulation of an idea we were now returning to, two decades on, to revisit and reassess.
It was a poignant place to begin as I sat with Jim in the meeting room of the company’s compound in Helston, Cornwall. Not in terms of strategy or success, but with the passing of time. Twenty years is long enough for perspective to settle, and for earlier certainties to feel, if not naive, then at least incomplete.
When I first visited Fourth Element, 21 years ago, I remember not quite knowing what I would find. What I encountered was not so much a company as a set of ideas—two founders pushing against what they felt diving had become. Functional, certainly. But also, perhaps, lacking some of the feeling of identity and aspiration that other sports had managed to cultivate. Coming back now, the people were recognisably the same. The energy was still there. But the conversation had shifted—not dramatically in tone, but in scope.
And in that shift, there was something familiar. Over roughly the same period, X-Ray Mag has followed its own almost-parallel trajectory, from start-up to global brand. What began as a focus on diving as experience and culture has gradually expanded into something broader. Science, conservation, communication, and, increasingly, uncomfortable questions about where all this is heading.
So, in a way, this meeting came across less like a conventional interview and more like the picking up of a conversation that had simply been paused for 20 years, only to resume in a very different world.
Early vision
Back in 2005, the observation was almost visual. Divers were investing heavily in equipment and experiences—liveaboards, travel, technology—yet often presenting themselves in a way that appeared at odds with that investment. As Jim put it then, there was a mismatch. The idea was not born out of frustration, but recognition.
“There was just this sense,” he recalled, “that diving didn’t quite look the way it should. “We wanted to put the excitement back into it—make it something people felt part of again.”
At the time, a phrase emerged which captured the ambition rather neatly: putting a bit of James Bond back into diving. Not literally, but as shorthand for something more aspirational, making diving look and feel sharp again in the way that skiing, sailing or golf had managed to do. Something you could identify with, not just participate in.
Alongside that, a more technical observation sat. Thermal protection, in particular, felt like it was behind the curve.
“Why are we still wearing these bulky undersuits when better materials already exist?” The idea that diving could adopt innovations from other fields, such as outdoor sports and advanced textiles, was not widely pursued at the time. Fourth Element chose to pursue it.
Those first years were therefore defined by two parallel ambitions: improving performance and elevating identity. Neither was trivial, and both, in hindsight, proved necessary.
A different reading
Revisiting that first interview now, Jim’s reaction was telling. “I read it last night,” he said, “and I thought—some things have changed radically. And I love that.”
What stood out to him was not that the original thinking was misplaced, but that it was incomplete. Back then, the focus had been firmly on making better products. That still matters. It still underpins everything. But it no longer feels sufficient on its own.
“We were bringing new materials into diving. Making things warmer, less bulky. That was the story.”
It still is—just no longer the whole story.
The turning point
If there was a turning point, it did not arrive in the form of a formal decision. It came, as these things usually do, through a conversation.
“Roz Lunn (Rosemary E. Lunn – Ed.) called,” Jim said, “and told me about fishing nets being recycled into yarn.”
“This is waste from the ocean; Ghost fishing nets being recovered by divers and recycled into yarn. we saw the opportunity to turn this in to something that divers wild wear when they went back into the ocean, and our OceanPositive swimwear range was born.”
At the time, plastic pollution was just starting to enter broader awareness. There was an elegance to that idea, a circularity that seemed nearly too neat. Then, reality intruded.
“The products arrived… all in plastic bags.” He paused slightly. “And we just thought—this doesn’t work. We need to look at a bigger picture.”
It was a small moment, but an important one. It exposed a gap between intention and execution. “You can’t tell that story and then behave differently behind the scenes,” he said. “You’ve got to start with yourself.”
That realisation triggered something more fundamental. Not just a new product line, but a change in mindset.
Beyond products
What followed was not a rebranding exercise, but a gradual adjustment of how decisions are made. “Our mission now is just to be better,” Jim said. “Better than we were before.”
“Nothing is truly sustainable, but we can be better.”
It sounds modest, but it applies everywhere, from materials to packaging to logistics. “First question: Can we use a recycled or natural material? If there’s no performance loss, it’s a no-brainer.” And if there was a trade-off? “Then we have to decide what matters more.”
There was also a noticeable reluctance to lean too heavily on the language of sustainability. It avoided absolutes and replaced them with something more iterative and, perhaps, more honest.
At the same time, one principle remained unchanged, summed up simply, by Strikey who takes the lead in sourcing and developing new materials for fourth element’s porducts: “The product still has to perform.” That was not negotiable.
But gone are the days that recycled means having to settle for something less. Some of our biggest leaps - the X-core vest and the Xenos arc wetsuit have recycled and natural components that produce the performance benefits over less sustainable alternatives.”
Running a company and inspiring change
At some point, the conversation inevitably turned from products to people. What it means to run a company, not just build one.
“In the early years, I think I saw everything as competition,” Jim said. “It was me and Strikey, then us with a small but dedicated team, versus everyone else.”
That mindset, he suggested, was not entirely helpful. “You spend a lot of time reacting instead of looking for opportunities to collaborate.”
With time, that perspective softened. Not into complacency, but into something more pragmatic. “Working together, sharing knowledge—that’s where the real value is.”
When the company launched its Mission 2020 initiative to remove single use plastic packaging from its products, it was Strikey’s suggestion to open this up to the industry to collaborate. Over 100 organisations from instructors and dive schools to training agencies and the mainstream dive brands, made a commitment to change their practices to improve the health of our ocean. “It was the perfect example of how we could cooperate with our colleagues and competitors for something more important,” says Strikey. “But we still needed to reach the individual divers and persuade them that these were changes worth making.”
There were also lessons that came with scale. Hiring, for example.
“We’ve definitely made mistakes,” he admitted. “Bringing in people who, in hindsight, weren’t the right fit.”
The issue was not always competence, but alignment. “They didn’t really buy into what we were trying to do.”
Over time, that changed. “Now, we look for people who understand the bigger picture. Skills matter, of course, but mindset matters just as much.”
“Before, if someone asked what I did, I’d say I design and sell dive gear,” he said. “Amid COVID, it became: I help people pay their mortgage.”
Strikey and I realised that our biggest responsibility was to our team, to our staff who supported us.”
It is a simple shift, but a telling one. The responsibility becomes more tangible. Less abstract.
The limits of individual action
From here, the conversation widened, away from products and into behaviour, both personal and collective. Jim spoke about changes he had made in his own life. Small things. Not eating fish. Avoiding single-use plastics. Reducing travel.
Strikey was an early adopter of electric vehicles, accepting the struggle of navigating a poor charging infrastructure to pursue a lower environmental impact.
“On their own, these gestures don’t change anything,” he said. “But if enough people do it…” The sentence trailed off, but the implication was clear. Individual action only matters if it adds up. There is a built-in tension in this, between knowing that one person’s actions are insignificant and believing they still form part of a bigger picture. It is not entirely comfortable, but it is difficult to avoid.
Divers and visibility
Divers, in this context, occupy a particular position. “We’re the ones who actually see it,” Jim said. Most people experience the ocean from above. Divers experience it from within. “You can stand on the shoreline, and everything looks fine,” he said. “You’ve got to go below the surface to understand what’s really happening.” That creates awareness and, perhaps inevitably, responsibility.
“If there’s nothing left to see, do people still go diving?”
There was also a more pragmatic angle here, one that reframed the issue in direct terms.
Without a vibrant ocean yielding wonderful experiences, does the sport of diving, and the industry associated with it continue to exist?
“Clearly, if we want to preserve it, we need to act, whatever way we can.”
A moment in Sipadan
One experience Jim had in the past brought this into sharper focus. After a long ghost net had washed onto the reef in Sipadan (Malaysia), local divers had spent many hours removing it overnight. Later, during a surface interval, Jim picked up a bag and began collecting plastic from the shoreline.
“I didn’t really think about it,” he said. “I just did it.” During the next surface interval, others followed suit. “Ten people went out and did the same thing.” He shrugged slightly. “It doesn’t change the world. But it changes something.” It was not scalable, but it showed how behaviour can spread.
Economics and conservation
A more grounded example, he mentioned, comes from the Philippines at Amun Ini Beach Resort, run by Biggs Eggert. Her approach is disarmingly simple but quietly radical. Rather than relying on itinerant foreign instructors, she has made it a principle to recruit locally and invest in them, training them from the ground up, in some cases even teaching them how to swim, and supporting them all the way through to becoming dive professionals.
“Their income depends on that reef,” Jim said. “So they protect it.”
What followed was a direct alignment of incentives. These were not transient workers passing through for a season, but individuals whose livelihoods, and often their families’ livelihoods, were tied to the long-term health of that environment. In several cases, this income replaced work abroad as domestic helpers or nannies, allowing the women to remain within their own communities while earning a stable living.
The effect was tangible: a reef that was actively protected, not by regulation alone, but by people with a clear and immediate stake in its well-being. The result was a healthier ecosystem, a stronger and more self-sufficient local community and, not incidentally, a better experience for visiting divers.
It is not a model that can simply be replicated everywhere. But it demonstrates what becomes possible when conservation is not positioned as an abstract ideal, but as something that works in practice.
Narration and attention
At several points, the conversation returned, perhaps inevitably, to communication.
“Attention is not the same as retention,” Jim said at one point.
It is a simple distinction, but an important one. Social media draws attention, often very effectively. But it rarely holds it.
“You scroll through things,” he said. “You look at them. But you don’t remember them.”
That observation resonates. It speaks to something we encounter constantly in publishing: the difference between being seen and being understood.
“People respond to stories,” he said. “That’s how we make sense of things.”
There is, perhaps, a certain irony here. In an age of constant communication, the ability to communicate meaningfully feels more important—and more difficult—than ever.
A shared path
While listening to all this, it was difficult not to recognise certain parallels. Over the same 20 years, both Fourth Element and X-Ray Mag have expanded beyond their original focus. Not by design, necessarily, but by following the logic of their own development. From product to perspective. From activity to context. There was a sense of being part of the same broader conversation, approaching it from different directions but increasingly asking similar questions.
Where it leads
Looking back, the early ambition to “put the excitement back into diving” does not feel misplaced. If anything, it still holds. But the meaning has shifted. It is no longer just about where you go or what you use. It is also about what it represents—and what it costs.
Jim put it plainly: “We were aware of these issues before, we just didn’t respond to them.”
There is something disarmingly honest in that, because it applies, in one way or another, to most of us. There is no neat conclusion. Just a direction of travel. From style to substance. From performance to responsibility. From identity to awareness. And, perhaps, from merely enjoying the underwater world to asking, more directly, what role we play in its future. It is not a comfortable question, but it is, increasingly, unavoidable. ■
