Dan Orr on Safety, Leadership, and the Future of the Diving Industry

Inside Scuba (IS) recently had the privilege of sitting down with diving safety advocate and industry leader Dan Orr (DO). From his early experiences breathing underwater to his roles as President of DAN and Chairman of DEMA, Orr offers insights on what hooked him on the sport, how his military service shaped his perspective, and the critical challenges facing the recreational diving community today.

Early Diving Experiences

IS: You were hooked on diving after your first try in Biscayne Bay as an adolescent. Can you describe that first experience and what exactly hooked you?

DO: The first experience, I wouldn’t really call it a scuba dive. A friend and I found his brother's equipment, dragged the tank on our bicycles, and went down to a breakwater on Biscayne Bay. We were climbing down, taking turns using the equipment, looking around, and trying to figure out what was going on down there. I'm not really sure if I'd call that a scuba diving experience, but it was the first time I actually breathed underwater.

What really excited me before that was visiting my grandparents in Plantation Key. A friend of my grandfather's was Art McKee, the first treasure hunter in the Florida Keys. Art would attend parties and tell stories about the Spanish galleons he was finding, and he always had treasure with him, like a necklace with a piece of eight. I was visualizing what it must have looked like down there, and that really excited me.

Then, around 1954 or 1955, my parents took me to see the movie Underwater!. About 75% to 80% of the film was underwater. In the movie, they found a virtually intact Spanish galleon with a Golden Madonna and Child statue, pieces of eight, and gold. I was just enthralled, and that's what really turned me on to the sport.

Military Service and Safety Philosophy

IS: How did your experience as a rescue swimmer in the US Navy shape your perspective on diving safety and emergency response later in your career?

DO: I think a lot of it began even earlier, as my grandparents said I was probably the most cautious child they'd ever seen. In the Navy, I was a swimmer on an air crew rescue team. Our job was to follow aircraft carriers and get pilots and crew members out of the water if an aircraft went down.

That role really got me thinking about the steps you need to take to ensure you are completely safe and that the people around you are completely safe. Even though I was certified in 1964 before the Navy, the course wasn't very thorough. We learned how to survive underwater, but we didn't learn a lot of academics, and we had to go out and do our open water dives ourselves. This experience made me decide I had to know as much as I possibly could about the sport to survive, because I wanted to enjoy it, but I wanted to do it safely. I would read everything, talk to everyone, and practice my skills every weekend in quarries to be better, be safer, and embed safety in my actions.

Building a University Program

IS: You eventually joined Wright State University and turned its scuba program into one of the largest college-level programs in the country. Can you tell us about that?

DO: I went back to college after active duty and eventually got a master’s degree in biology. I started teaching scuba after the original instructor died, and his wife offered to pay my way to the instructor courses. When Wright State built a pool, I pitched teaching a scuba course. After an initial candidate admitted he'd never been diving, I took over.

I had a couple of rules: I guaranteed it would be a safe course that met all academic requirements, and they had to leave me alone. I used my "Law of Assumption" to get things done, like convincing the building people to construct a dive locker without paperwork.

We offered a comprehensive entry-level course, and I created an intermediate course called Experience Open Water Diver which involved 25 open water dives in a variety of conditions, such as river, night, deep, and low visibility diving. The advanced class combined advanced and research diving skills for those looking to make diving a career. We also had courses like underwater photography, archeology, and rapid response rescue and recovery.

I was able to get scuba diving included as a general education requirement at the university^, . We also opened up the evening classes to the community as a continuing education course, making the program one of the largest in the country.

Leadership at Divers Alert Network and DEMA

IS: You were a volunteer for Divers Alert Network (DAN) early on and eventually became the President of the company. What changes at DAN did you prioritize?

DO: I’m a mission guy. I wanted to ensure we focused on the mission of developing programs beneficial to diver safety all over the world.

Key priorities and changes included:

• Training Programs: I started as the Director of Training, specifically developing the oxygen program and related equipment, which became very popular and helped DAN grow.

• Information Dissemination: I asked the medical departments to find important information published in technical journals and publish it in Alert Diver so it would be generally available to the diving community.

• Research: We increased field research, including work with Doppler ultrasound and Dr. Richard Vann at Project Dive Exploration who was collecting information from dive profiles that were downloaded from dive computers to collect dive profile data and determine the instance of injury.

• Insurance Program: I wanted the insurance program to be diver-friendly and asked the claims adjudicators that if there was a decision to be made between the insurance company and the diver, we always sided with the diver.

• Employees: I focused on the employees, ensuring the environment was friendly and people were paid and treated properly so they wanted to come to work.

IS: You are currently the Chairman of the Board of DEMA (Diving, Equipment and Marketing Association). What do you see as the single most critical challenge facing the recreational diving industry today, and how is DEMA working to address it?

DO: The diving industry has many challenges. A critical challenge is that the sport is so competitive it keeps prices too low, meaning instructors are not adequately compensated or treated as professionals. Diving was once run primarily by hobbyists, and it’s slowly changing toward people who are more professionals and understand business. DEMA tries to help by offering courses on making dive businesses better at business, including how to display, inventory, and market what they do properly.

My primary strategic focus at DEMA is on Public Policy. The Public Policy Committee looks at any public policy—state or federal—that could have a negative impact on the sport, whether environmentally or business-focused, such as:

• Certification Requirements: Fighting state attempts to define "certification," which would require divers to be licensed by the state.

• Environmental Issues: Fighting issues like the current Florida law where fishermen can chum for sharks to kill them, but photographers cannot chum for sharks to photograph them. We also worked to extend the moratorium on the harvesting of Goliath grouper.

• Boat Liability: Getting the industry motivated to deal with issues related to boat liability insurance.

Evolving Safety and Key Message

IS: Since the early days of DAN, how have you seen the perception and practice of diving safety evolve?

DO: Years ago, in the sixties and early seventies, there were a lot of diving accidents because people were pushing the edge of the envelope without appropriate technology, training, or knowledge.

DAN increased the body of knowledge by publishing the Annual Diving Report. We continued the work of collecting fatality information, analyzing trends, and sharing it with the diving industry so they could develop new training regimens to make diving safer.

A key finding came from analyzing fatality records. In the initial analysis, the number one triggering event leading to a fatality was running out of breathing gas underwater (41% of fatalities). By 2015, the number one triggering event had changed to underlying health issues, especially cardiac issues, due to an aging diving population.

IS: What is the crucial message you try to impart to your audiences at diving events and webinars?

DO: My primary message is to make sure you are fully prepared for the dive, both equipment-wise and emotionally and physically. Crucially, you need to be prepared for what could happen during the dive, which means practicing your skills.

I stress the importance of dynamic rehearsal—actually using your motor skills to practice things like the exchange of breathing gas or dropping weight belts. We always had students drop weight belts multiple times in class, because once they leave the course, the overlearning is over, and it's up to them to continue practicing those skills.

IS: What do you think is the biggest gap in knowledge amongst the average scuba diver?

DO: The biggest gap is being able to recognize when there's a problem. For instance, a majority of calls to the DAN emergency hotline about "the bends" don't come until Tuesday or Wednesday night, long after a weekend of diving—it’s only when the symptoms won't go away. People often rationalize precursor symptoms, like a rash, as something minor, rather than recognizing they need to be looked at.

I believe these symptoms need to be taught as part of the initial open water course, because the number of people who go on to continuing education is relatively small. A lot of people stop learning once they take that first course, and to me, that's a tragedy.

Ongoing Involvement

IS: You've served as past president and chairman of the Historical Diving Society. Why is it important for the modern diving community to preserve and study its history?

DO: It’s very important. I always included some discussion of diving history in my teaching so students would know where the sport came from and appreciate that it's still relatively young. We need to understand the people who were creating these things—like Jacques Cousteau, Emile Gagnon, and Dr. Sylvia Earle. History is important because we need to understand where we came from to give us a better appreciation for where we're going.

IS: What else is keeping you busy in the diving world?

DO: I still have this affliction of not being able to say “No.” When I left DAN, my wife and I decided to form a consulting company to continue doing things to help people the best we can, whether we get paid or not.

Currently, in addition to being Chairman of DEMA, I am:

• Chairman of the Board of Force Blue: A non-profit that takes special operations veterans with diving experience (like Navy Seals and Army Rangers) on environmental missions, such as restoring coral reefs and removing hurricane rubble.

• President of the Academy of Underwater Arts & Science: The non-profit organization that gives out the annual NOGI Awards considered to be equivalent to the Academy Award of Scuba Diving.

• Chairman of the Board of Best Publishing Company and WCH Media Group.

• On the Historical Diving Society advisory board and involved with other groups.

We are also helping with new safety technologies, such as the Avelo diving system and a device from a company called Divo that will inflate a BC when a diver runs out of air or stops breathing. We do this because the industry means a lot to us, and it's part of who we are.