Pioneers

My name is Tory van Dyke. I began SCUBA diving at the early age of 17 years old. I always wanted to be a diver, from my earliest childhood recollections of watching the fictional Mike Nelson character and “Sea Hunt” on TV in the fifties and sixties. My dad, Kenny van Dyke, had a small dive shop operation that he […]

One of the Pacific Northwest’s diving pioneers from the early days of Pacific Northwest Diving. A “Pioneer” is a trailblazer that has the courage to explore the unknown. Spence Campbell is certainly a diving pioneer and has blazed many trails for the rest of us to follow. Since the late 1950’s, Spence has served the diving community in a variety […]

My first dive experience was as Boy Scout in the local high school pool with a two hose regulator and a steel tank with a homemade backpack. The whole experience was less than 5 minutes but left a desire to do more. I was taking flying lessons from a friend in Fairbanks Alaska when he announced that there would be […]

Paul Schorzman interviews diving pioneer Brent Budden, reflecting on his lifetime of diving that began just out of grammar school, when a friend asked him to help him dive for sunken logs at an old sawmill. . .

Becky Witty interviews John Resect, Jr. with his reflections on a lifetime of diving which began in Southern California in 1945 when he was just 10 years old. He’s logged more than 5,000 hours as a commercial diver and 10,000 as a recreational scuba diver.

Becky Witty and Darlene Iskra recount their experiences as two of the few women diving in the 1970’s. Becky became a dive instructor in the Caribbean, while Darlene worked for the military.

Tom Hemphill interviews Laurie Hannula, who began her diving career diving for pennies in her family’s swimming pool. She was later certified as a scuba diver in 1977 through Underwater Sports. Tom shares his background in diving, which began with an interest in searching for treasure.

Chris shares some interesting pieces of dive gear from the early days of diving, and reflects on how he became interested in becoming a scuba diver. He later became a NAUI Instructor.

Jim Willoughby is one of the most popular and prolific diving leaders in the North Pacific Region. He is a true diving pioneer and highly respected mentor to many sport and professional divers. Of course, he is also a master storyteller. 1949 at age 19, at the Central California coastal community, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Jim began his diving adventure with homemade diving […]

Tom Hemphill was attracted to the water and the underwater world as a very young boy. His father was a research biologist at Hanford, Washington where he conducted studies of the animals that lived near and in the Columbia River around the nuclear reactor reservation. His Dad was also an avid tropical fish breeder at home and Tom grew up […]