If you love scuba diving, deep dark waters, decompression procedures and mixed gas theory, you must have heard the name many times: Bret Gilliam, a revolutionary trailblazer in the dive world. Over the past few decades, he has changed the way scuba diving is practiced.
In the first of the DecoStop Q&A series, we meet British award-winning underwater photographer, author and marine conservationist Dr Richard Smith, who is the author and photographer of the bestselling new book, The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs.
Bruce Partridge is the founder of Shearwater Research, which makes high-quality dive computers, trimix computers and electronic control systems for rebreathers, with simple and intuitive user interfaces and a reputation for being reliable, user-friendly and easy to read underwater.
I was greatly saddened by the loss of Lad Handelman, who passed away as a result of a heart attack on the evening of October 26, 2020. Though most people knew him as one of the larger-than-life giants and pioneers of commercial oilfield diving, few knew that he was a key advisor for my magazine aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving and the tek.Conferences in the early 1990s.
John Lautermilch, an award-winning American artist from Saint Louis, Missouri, and graduate of the Washington University School of Fine Arts, has created paintings for 60 years, which have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions and include commissions for individual collectors and institutions. Among his plethora of paintings of the natural world are artworks featuring vivid and dynamic underwater scenes with divers and coral reefs.
Jakub Šimánek lives for diving and dives for a living. He inherited his passion for the underwater world from his father at a young age. Currently, a Factory Instructor Trainer for the Liberty closed circuit rebreather (CCR), Jakub has been a part of the development team at the dive equipment manufacturer Divesoft since 2012.
In my line of work as a dive industry professional, I attend a lot of dive shows and get to meet a lot of people, most of them nice and interesting in various ways. It was also at a dive show in Italy, many years ago, that I first met Andrea Donati and his partner, Daniela Spaziani, of Ponza Diving.
In January 2018, Barb Roy, our long-time associate editor and regular contributor, passed away after a long battle with illness. We celebrate her inspiring life and imagery in this memorial portfolio, highlighting some of the many beautiful and vivid underwater photographs Barb took during her frequent forays under the waves.
British artist Jason deCaires Taylor has created unique underwater sculptures and installations in locations all over the world. We first interviewed him in 2007 when he finished a photo-documentary of one of his earliest works in Grenada.
As Evelyn Bartram Dudas’s Nikonos III made its way toward the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean one day not too long ago, she did the only thing that made sense to her at the time. She dove after it, retrieving the camera just before it was lost amidst the twisted remains of a shipwreck on the sea floor. Her rapid descent cost her a broken eardrum.
