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The League of Extraordinary Divers Podcast

Imagine sitting down to a coffee or cocktail with your favorite diving personality and hearing their stories.  The League of Extraordinary Divers podcast brings legends in the diving industry to you.  Hosted by Tec Clark, this podcast features diving legends of the past and present sharing some of their best scuba diving stories.  You'll hear stories such as their original scuba training, scariest diving stories, funniest diving stories, favorite diving locations, as well as tips for divers.

LXD047 : William Cline

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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 age
  • California to Florida
  • Pro Dive’s Early Days
  • Fort Lauderdale Reef Named After Him – Willie’s Way
  • Losing a Wreck
  • His Dive Buddy Stuffed His BCD Pockets with Food to Attract Sharks
  • Cline Group
  • Oh Captain, My Captain by Jean Michel Cousteau

Sponsor

Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures

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.

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LXD046 : Dawn Kernagis – Extreme Environment Legend

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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

Sponsor

Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures

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.

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LXD045 : Lamar Hires – Cave Diving Pioneer

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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 Hunt
  • Used Ned Deloach’s Underwater Florida
  • Wes Skiles
  • Woody Jasper
  • Lloyd Bailey
  • Rescue 911 Show – Cave Rescue
  • Cave Rescues and Recoveries
  • The invention of the Classic Wing
  • The invention of Sidemount diving for US cave systems
  • Mapping 14 cave systems
  • Dive Rite Manufacturing
  • NSS-CDS

Sponsor

Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

LXD044 : Rosemary Lunn – Diving Industry Author

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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

Sponsor

Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

LXD 043 : Bob Talbot – Nature Cinematographer

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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 14
  • Early photographs and films
  • Encounter with Gray Whale
  • Oceanmen filming goes wrong
  • Being connected
  • Landing on a shark
  • How to be an ocean ambassador
  • talbotoceangallery.com
  • talbotfilms.com

Sponsor

Special thanks to our episode sponsor Aggressor Adventures

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

Welcome Dive Professionals

Welcome to ScubaGuru.com!  The ScubaGuru brand is dedicated to giving dive professionals tools and techniques to be GREAT LEADERS – leaders in the classroom, leaders underwater, and leaders in their diving businesses.  With unique leadership skill-sets, the dive professional can create:

  • Better divers
  • Loyal customers
  • A thriving dive center
  • A flourishing dive industry

See what we mean by Go Beyond the Standard and enjoy the rewards of being truly great at what you do!

Sincerely,

Tec Clark

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