A pioneering underwater explorer and film maker, Jill Heinerth has dived deeper into caves than any woman in history. With a collection of magnificent images, from inside Antarctic icebergs to crystal underwater cathedrals, Jill shares a glimpse of a breathtaking world few will experience in person.

Jill’s photography and writing have been featured in prominent publications and major media outlets around the world. She regularly contributes to the development of training materials for international dive organizations, and is the author of three exceptional books on cave diving and underwater photography.

Jill wrote, produced, and appeared in a number of underwater adventure films, including the award winning PBS documentary series “Water’s Journey.” She has been called upon by Hollywood producers as a diving technical consultant, directing difficult underwater scenes.

This year, Jill has had many superlative expeditionary experiences. She explored and surveyed over 8000 feet of new cave passages in remote Acklins Island. During Jill’s most recent expedition to ocean sea mounts off Bermuda, she completed the deepest dives ever conducted in the region in support of a NOAA scientific mission. Her next major expedition is planned for early 2012, when Jill and a team of off road motorcyclists will explore the Western Desert of Egypt, diving into oasis springs with National Geographic.

Jill Heinerth’s accolades include induction to the inaugural class of the Women Diver’s Hall of Fame, being named Canadian Technical Diver of the Year and being presented with the prestigious Wyland Icon Award. Jill’s formal education includes a degree in Fine Arts in Visual Communications and Design and she has successfully combined her love for the underwater world with her artistic talent, leading to scores of photography and filmmaking awards.

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He dives since 1971, from 1978 takes part in annual cave diving expeditions with pioneering explorations of siphons on Southern Ural, the Caucasian Mountains, Middle Asia, the Crimea, Arkhangelsk region.
Since 1997 several pioneering explorations in Orda cave. The maximum distance – 980m from the entrance.
1999-2000 – series of expeditions on “Admiral Nakhimov”
2000 – cave diving expedition on Cuba. Search and exploration of new caves.
Since 2001 – annual expeditions as events of “Secrets of Shipwrecks” project.
Since 2002 – expeditions on the Blue Lake (Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia), dives on 120m in 2002, on 150m in 2003, on 180m in 2004.
Member of Russian Geographic Society.

Cave diver, diving journalist, one of the initiators and members of the Orda Cave Awareness Project, author of the book “Orda Cave Awareness Project”. Member of ‘Water Crazy Fantasies’ team.

I started a diving career by chance, I found myself drafted at the French Navy Diving Department after some administrative errors. But there I computed my first decompression tables, designed for pig experiments, and discovered a vocation.

A year later I finished my studies by Dr Lambertsen Institute at Philadelphia, during the Predicitive Study IV experiment. He gave me rabbits to expose to isobaric counter diffusion. I am sorry to admit that the rabbits died of heart attack during the pressurisation and my work remained inconclusive.

With such a CV, it was then easy for me to join the famous Comex as a research engineer. For ten outstanding years, I followed deep experimental dives, from heliox to hydrogen breathing, until the last record dive to 701m in 1991.

This gave me a good reason to participate to the deep Norwegian contracts of the 80’s and then transfer the knowledge to Brazil when serious deep operations started in 1990.

In the mean time, I matured my decompression theories and issued the whole set of Comex tables and the French 1992 tables.

1995 was a bad year for the offshore industry in general and for myself in particular. I left Comex and started a new career with technical diving. Trained by Billy Deans, I soon became the French Licensee of IANTD. For 10 years, I enjoyed teaching trimix and rebreather diving, but kept decompression modelling as a hobby.

Todays, I am back to the offshore industry, which is high in spirit because of the high oil prices and has a great need of diving experts. Working for Technip and other large commercial diving companies, I have written meters of shelves of diving manuals and advanced saturation procedures.

With new data in hands and new scientific discoveries around, I am on the point to publish an ultimate decompression algorithm and edit revised tables for commercial diving.

Peter Gaertner studied mathematics and physics at Univ. Stuttgart, Germany, and after some years of research in physics he now works in an RD department in the automotive sector, developing oxygen sensors.

With the age of 12, he started snorkling around naples, italy and fell in love with diving. Nowadays his first interest is cavediving, especially survey and photography in caves. The PSCR Rebreather is the tool he needs for long dives to accomplish the time consuming tasks. Because of his interest for the functional principle of his Rebreather he wrote software and models to predict the behaviour of the PSCR in real-world diving.

Out of his experienced he gathered as project coordinator for the team “Cavebase” and as a summary of his talks and workshop he developed a program for a strongly DIR-minded PSCR-class which he now teaches as an instructor for PATD.

Regarded by many as one of Europe’s foremost technical diving instructors Phil Short runs his own technical diving company specializing in advanced diver training to all levels. He was a development diver for both the VR3 computer and the Ouroboros Closed Circuit rebreather. When he is not instructing or testing equipment he runs expeditions to seriously remote locations such as eastern Russia where temperatures are well below freezing. At heart he is a cave diver and has to his credit explored some of the toughest caves in Europe.

Head of Maritime Operations Department and Sea Lab R/V IMOR. Graduate of Polish Navy Academy connected with Sea since 33 years. International Hydrographer  of Class A. From 1982 till 2000 has worked on hydrographic ship ORP “Heweliusz” and during 10 years he was a captain of it. In 2000 he has moved to military reserve as Lieutenant Commander. He was a captain of research ships “Doktor Lubecki” and “Imor”. Certified captain of the sea ships up to 3000 GT. From 6 years he is managing research project “Pollution monitoring of the sea bottom around wreck position”, which has adjusted 16 wrecks positioned in sensitive sea areas like Gdansk Bay. From the beginning of his hydrographic career he was strongly committed to researching and exploration of the wrecks not only on polish waters. In 2009 he was a head of expedition, whom the mission was wreck discovery of polish submarine ORP “Orzel” on the North Sea. In June 2011 he has organized and managed the archeological expedition on the Baltic Sea “Gone with the Wind”, which has successfully led to exploration of two XVIII century wooden ship wrecks and discovery of 12 cast-iron cannons. He is also a member of Polish Sea Hydrographic Association and Scientific Board of Maritime Institute in Gdansk.

For more than 10 years he has specialized in cave diving and exploration of Tatra’s Cave syphon’s. He is also the Rebreather Diving Instructor and Cave Diving Instructor IANTD, FFS and CMAS. Lifeguard of TOPR (Tatra’s Voluntary Rescue Team). Exploration and Rescue is his main aim, so all his trainings are dedicated to it. An author of several innovations in technical solutions for diving configurations, which makes exploration more easy: entering wrecks (NoMount), narrow dark caves exploration (Sidemount) and deep divings (Dualrebreather). He is sharing his experience through Wreck Courses on the Baltic Sea, Cave Courses in Mexico and France and Technical Courses in Poland. He has dived on Open Circuit at 181m depth in Czech Cave Hranicka Propast and on DualRebreather at 222m in Egypt. Currently he is concentrating on Exploration Diving in Mexico and also on promoting SideMount technique in recreational and cave diving. In his free time he is involved in underwater video shooting. He has established Diving Organisation dualrebreather.com.

Hallvard Opheim is an active technical diver and GUE instructor. Situated at the west coast of Norway, accessibility to impressive WWII wrecks has become a passion, and led to joining the group Northsea Explorers some years back. The small but dedicated team is situated in the cities of Bergen and Ålesund, both important harbour cities during the second world war, leaving a lot of historic wrecks of the coast. The group has over the last years dived and video documented numerous wrecks, specializing in creating unique video footage from the deep, dark and cold waters of the norwegian fjords. Using top of the line HD video equipment together with powerful HMI lights, the team has published several short videos through Vimeo. The team continue to search for, dive and document historic wrecks whenever they get the chance.

Professor at Haute Ecole Paul Henri Spaak (Pôle Universitaire de Bruxelles Wallonie)
Vice-President DAN Europe Research & Education
Area Director DAN Europe Benelux & France

Author and co-author of more than 150 Scientific publications Co-author of 2 Books:

Balestra C, Germonpre P, Marroni A & Cronje FJ. (2007). PFO and the DIVER. Best Publishing, Flagstaff, AZ (USA).
Balestra C, Boancheaux E & Balestra C. (2008). Introduction à la CommuniCaCtion. Die Keure / La charte, Bruges.

more on http://www.eubs.org/CurVitBalestra.htm

In cave diving there are two different styles; technical divers who dive in flooded caves but rarely leave the water and cavers who dive but treat the flooded section as a barrier to finding further dry cave. Rick Stanton is a rarity in that he is at the top of both disciplines. Time and again he has exhibited a knack for pushing beyond the limits at which others believed the cave to have ended.

In the last 13 years, Rick has been involved in more technical cave diving using rebreathers, (often in duel configuration) for long penetration and greater depth. He has concentrated on the long deep siphons of Northern Europe, mainly in the Lot region of SW France, but also in the other major French, Spanish and Italian caves where he specializes in combining caving techniques with long and often deep multiple sump systems, transporting large amounts of diving equipment through the dry sections of the cave in the pursuit of exploration.

Typical have been his dives at the popular site of Emergence de Ressel in southern France. This river bed cave was thoroughly explored in 1990 by the extraordinary Swiss solo cave diver Olivier Isler, who reached a dry cave section. Unable to remove his triple-circuit rebreather system unaided, Olivier swam back, declaring that he thought it unlikely the 2km long, 80m deep sump would ever be passed. using open-circuit equipment. Nine years later, Stanton and diving partner Jason Mallinson made an epic five-hour inward dive followed by a six-hour outward dive, all using open-circuit equipment. In the process, he explored hundreds of metres of dry cave passages to a further sump. This led to a three year project involving dives totalling over 4000m in five sumps & spending two days in the system. Rick returned to this cave earlier this year & added a further 800m of new line.

In 2004 when six British soldiers were trapped in a Mexican cave by flood water, Rick Stanton was one of two divers flown out by the British Government to accomplish the rescue.  His quiet and confident nature made him the ideal diver for such a task; persuading one of the cavers who was scared of water to make a 180m dive out of the cave!
Constantly making and adapting equipment especially for the cave environment, Rick believed that small, lightweight rebreathers offered a way of furthering exploration at many sites. He has developed and manufactured two CCR units, most recently a unique side mount, fully closed circuit rebreather which has been instrumental in his achieving the British cave diving depth record of 90m in challenging circumstances at Wookey Hole, Somerset, the birth place of UK cave diving. Here he pushed on through gravel squeezes previously considered to be impassable at depths in excess of 70m. When Rick says something is impassable you can bet it probably is!

Most recently he has been part of a team exploring the Pozo Azul system in N Spain where last year they broke the cave diving penetration record with a series of 3 dives totaling 8.8km. This team returned again in 2011 & surpassed their own limits.

Lundgren pioneered Technical and Cave diving, exploration diving, in Scandinavia in the early 1990^th and part founded the prestigious explorations groups BSTD, Baltic Sea technical Divers, and Ocean Discovery. As president Lundgren spearheaded numerous explorations worldwide during the 1990^th including targets like the Spanish gold galleon outside Key West, the M1 experimental submarine of the coast of Plymouth, the blue hole caves in Bahamas and Bimini and setting the North European cave penetration record in arctic conditions. The success of the Ocean Discovery ongoing project “the search for the Admiral’s fleet” is nothing but sensational. Ocean Discovery has since the early 2000^th discovered and explored more than 120 ship wrecks. Many of these wrecks have earned international fame and become research projects for scientists globally.

Lundgren also works professionally with sea bottom surveys and environmental ocean studies specialized in advanced sonar systems and ROV, Remotely Operated Vehicles.

Lundgren has participated in numerous underwater expeditions worldwide and is recognized as one of Europe's most experienced trimix divers and underwater videographers. With thousands of dives to his credit - including cold-water dives, wreck, cave and technical dives using stage deco techniques, specially mixed gases and diver propulsion vehicles - Lundgren is an accomplished photographer and filmmaker with a contagious passion for discovery and exploration.

Tomasz is one of the most active wreck divers in the Baltic sea and has been connected with wreck diving for almost 30 years.
He has dived on famous Baltic wrecks such as Gustloff, Goya and Graf Zeppelin as well as taking part in discovering and identifying new wrecks.
He was also a member of teams which explored wrecks deeper than 100 meters off the Sweden and Alands coastlines.
During most dives, tried to take pictures.  You can find some of them here.
He is a co-founder of BALTICTECH – a diving conference connected with the Baltic sea and also the founder of SANTI, a company which produces dry suits and undersuit’s.