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
Thanks For Listening!
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