Kategorie: News
Diving pioneer passes away after prolonged illness
The global diving community is mourning the loss of a pioneer of technical diving, Bret Gilliam, who passed away yesterday (8 October) at the age of 72. Earlier this year he had suffered a severe stroke which resulted in a form of vascular dementia. Sadly, his health had not been good for some time.
Gilliam became well known as one of the co-founders of the training agency Technical Diving International (TDI), but he was also involved in many other diving-related businesses, most notably Uwatec and G2 Publishing, which published Fathoms magazine.
Before concentrating on mixed gas diving, Gilliam was an avid depth hunter with compressed air. He held the world record for the deepest dive with air, descending to 138m in Roatan in 1990 and later extended this record to 145m.
Gilliam was born on 3 February 1951 to a naval commander and his wife at the US Naval Academy in Maryland on the Atlantic coast and grew up on the motor yacht his family also used to move between duty stations. He said that he knew how to swim before he could walk and that his first word was "boat". He was already a proficient freediver when he started diving training at the age of eight.
In 1971, Gilliam became a diving instructor at Vocaline Air Sea Technology, where he developed nitrox and decompression procedures and sparked his interest in underwater photography.
In 1972, he was applauded by the Governor of the US Virgin Islands for his heroic efforts after coming to the aid of fellow diver Rod Temple, who had been attacked and killed by whitetip sharks off St Croix.
After the failed rescue attempt, Gilliam had to ascend from great depths and be evacuated to Puerto Rico for treatment for a DCI.
In 1972, he also founded his consulting company Ocean Tech.
The following year, he founded the dive resort VI Divers Ltd. in St. Croix. In addition to coaching recreational divers and scientific dive teams, he also established a film and studio support division that saw him involved in films and documentaries such as The Deep and Abyss, National Geographic and Discovery Channel.
In 1977, he founded AMF Yacht Charters Ltd, which specialised in providing luxury vessels up to 115 metres in length.
Both AMF Yacht Charters and VI Divers Ltd were sold in 1985. In 1988 Gilliam founded Ocean Quest International, which became the world's largest recreational diving company, before selling it in 1990.
In 1991, he joined the late Tom Mount, Billy Deans and Dick Rutkowski on the board of the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD) before founding the training organisation Technical Diving International (TDI) with Mitch Skaggs and Tanya Burnett in 1994.
Gilliam took over as president and CEO of Uwatec USA in 1996 and was instrumental in helping Uwatec founder and owner Heinz Ruchti sell the company to Johnson Outdoors the following year for nearly $50 million.
Author of more than 70 books and over 1,500 magazine articles
In his 50-year diving career, about 30 of which he spent in the Caribbean and other equatorial diving destinations, Gilliam says he completed about 19,000 dives. He made a name for himself as an underwater photographer and as a prolific author of books and some 1,500 diving articles - between 1992 and 2005 he was publisher or editor of a number of US diving magazines.
He was also a qualified aeroplane and deep dive pilot, captain and recompression chamber leader.
He received numerous awards and honours, was a member of the Explorer's Club and was named a Legend of the Sea by the Beneath the Seas Foundation for five consecutive years beginning in 2005.
Reflecting on his success a few years ago, Gilliam said that his golden rules as an entrepreneur have always been to treat customers as he would want to be treated, to give them good value for their dollar and to never hesitate to expand a business. Our sympathies are with Brett's wife, Gretchen.
Bret Gilliam at Wikipedia