Author Archives

Unknown's avatar

Diving since 1961 – with a background in military, commercial, recreational and technical diving – David Strike has dived extensively throughout the Asia Pacific region, has authored several hundred articles about diving, is the recipient of the ADEX ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for contributions to Technical Diving, a Fellow of the Explorers Club of New York, and the former owner and organiser of the biennial OZTeK Technical Diving Conference and a regular speaker and presenter at regional and international diving events. He is presently engaged in producing a series of diving-related books.

  • If – by Rudyard Kipling

    I always tried …. “If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If… Read More ›

  • The Cell Door Saga

    On Tuesday, 13th April, 1999, John Lippmann, the late, Bob Ramsay, Grahame Weir and myself settled down in the former Billiard Room at Raffles Hotel, Singapore, for a quiet little drink as a prelude to the start of the following… Read More ›

  • Vale Michael Menduno

    On the 3rd October 2025, Michael Menduno – one of modern diving’s most enigmatic personalities – died following a stroke.  Despite a public persona as the person whose name will, forever, be synonymous with the advent of ‘Technical Diving’ (as… Read More ›

  • Selling Diving

    Tarnished by an image that’s become associated with the high-pressure techniques of a used-car sales-person or the indifference of a poorly trained ‘phone-blower’, selling is often considered to be nothing more than a stop-gap vocation for people who happen to… Read More ›

  • The North Sea Bus

    In the early ‘Seventies, the work-horse helicopter of choice for North Sea operations was the Westland Wessex – usually flown by former Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilots – with the pilot sitting higher than the cabin. Obliged to always… Read More ›

  • The Mother Lodge – by Rudyard Kipling

    The Mother Lodge by Rudyard Kipling There was Rundle, Station Master,An’ Beazely of the Rail, An’ Ackman, Commissariat, An’ Donkin o’ the Jail; An’ Blake, Conductor-Sergeant, Our Master twice was ‘e, An’ ‘im that kept the Europe-shop, Old Framjee Eduljee…. Read More ›