Has anyone met one of the diving greats such as Gary Gentile?

[laughintom]

I did my open water check out dives with Rosario Dawson. While not famous for her diving she is fine as hell and very nice. Met Ritchie Kohler at Dutch Springs and am doing my Deco Procedures and Advanced Nitrox class with Bernie Chowdhury. Very nice guy and very humble!

 

[AbyssalPlains]

I agree that "great" is a relative term. Gary Gentile is surely a superb diver and fine wreck historian, but if you pick up one of his books you will quickly notice that he is quick to stir in his own personal opinions in a very biased and actually immature way. Unfortunately, the editors (if there were any) didn't catch those shortsighted and inappropriate comments that go far beyond the issue of wreck diving and are plain offensive to certain people/cultures. To me, that conveys an image of the author as someone rather full of himself and prone to climbing a self-made pedestal.

 

[FritzCat66]

I was pretty close with Joe Odom for awhile; I'm sure some of the cavers know him or know of him. I think he wrote some of the TDI rebreather training manuals, too. I'm not a caver, in fact I was just starting to dive when I got to know him from other contexts, but I did end up meeting a lot of the other big caver/techie guys like Hal Watts through Joe, had no idea their significance at the time.

I fell outta touch with him, miss him sometimes. He's one of the best storytellers there ever was.

>*< Fritz

 

[mylinda]

I met Evelyn Dudas at Ginnie a Last summer. My sister dives with her in the Springs. It was an awesome priviledge! She just blew me away with all her experiences. Being a fairly new diver, I really did not know alot about her at the time. My sister called me all excited and said come on down to Florida, "Evelyn is coming". I was just as excited after I met her... She is an amazing lady!

 

[drbill]

I've worked with the Cousteaus and dived with Jean-Michel and Dr. Richard "Murph" Murphy, Wyland asked me to be his dive buddy so we could film giant sea bass, I filmed great whites alongside Dr. Guy Harvey and contributed footage to his TV episode about that trip, I chatted with Zale Perry at our own Casino Point Dive Park, I know Lorraine Sadler and used to work with her, I worked with Dr. Sylvia Earle on early Cousteau programs in the 70s and she was a member of the board of directors at the small school I taught at back then, have met many other greats in SCUBA...

not bad for a guy who does 95% of his diving solo.

 

[Puffer Fish]

Dover several times with the Calipso crew and Phillip...almost all the the well known Underwater filmers of the 70's...like the Taylor's and Al...

 

[H2Andy]

holy cow this is an old thread

i guess in terms of famous divers, i've only been diving with Jarrod Jablonski and David Rhea

 

[vladimir]

Has anybody met one of the rock-and-roll greats, such as Susanna Hoffs?

 

[BLUESEASONBALI]

i met a guy called tom west once! now theres a diver!!

Diving Bali | Dive Courses Bali

 

[smellzlikefish]

I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Rich Pyle after he gave my class a talk one day last semester. Dr. Pyle is known for pioneering rebreather research and has taken them about as deep as anyone else and is even helping to develop the Pegasus IV. When he's not diving, he is a world renowned ichthyologist and a computer whizz, specializing in programs for other scientists. His specialty is the area known as the twilight zone below recreational depths but above where most research submarines go where he discovers new species, in some areas, at the rate of 11 per hour. He is infamous for his bending stories, after which he has been paralyzed a couple of times. For example, one time he was a day's journey away from any help in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands when he got chased out of the water by sharks with an hour left of his decompression stop.