For 22 years, Cayman has been home to the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, but only virtually. This year, when the latest inductees step up to receive their plaudits, it will be at the new physical home of the organisation.
Work is continuing apace at Pedro St James to create what will be a permanent location of the hall of fame, which will double as a museum honouring not only the many divers from around the globe who have been inducted over the past two decades, but the long and storied history of scuba diving.
Up until now, the hall of fame has existed as a website, with annual induction and awards ceremonies being held at local hotels.
The plan to create an actual home for the hall of fame was announced back in 2019, with the intent that it would be ready for the 2020 awards ceremony. However, the COVID-19 pandemic – as well as subsequent supply chain issues – delayed those plans for two years.
Leslie Leaney, executive director of the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, says the new site will include a museum highlighting scuba diving history, not just in Cayman, but around the world.
Leaney says he hopes the museum will become a focal point that can be built on, with additional items being added to the permanent exhibit on a regular basis.
“The room at Pedro St James is a little larger than the space we had at the National Museum when we had the Legends of Scuba Diving exhibit a few years ago… We saw how we could do this. It proved it could work,” he said.
The year-long exhibit at the National Museum of the Cayman Islands, which launched in November 2016, marked the first physical home, albeit a temporary one, of the diving hall of fame.
That exhibit featured some unique items of dive history, including a regulator developed by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emil Gagnine in 1943, a pair of World War II-era wooden fins marketed by a California spearfisherman, and dive equipment used by TV and movie star Lloyd Bridges.
Keeper of dive history
Leaney knows his dive history.
He is the co-founder of the Historical Diving Society USA, and founder of The Journal of Diving History, a quarterly publication that features articles on all aspects of dive history, from tales of exploration by early divers to dive helmets through the ages. He is also the historical columnist for PADI’s Undersea Journal.
Leaney and other members of the Historical Diving Society, in 2018, also established the Leaney-Brooks Diving History Archive and Endowment at the library of the University of California, Santa Barbara, to ensure that the research and historical items collected over several decades endures.
He was recently awarded the 2022 California Scuba Service Award by the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, of which he is also a founder, for “turning his passion for diving’s history into a way for thousands to understand and discover theirs”.
Leaney is also an inductee of the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 2012.
He wears many different hats in the diving world, but is currently in Cayman in his role as the executive director of the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, which he has been working with since 2003.
He says the hall of fame, featuring the museum pieces, will be unique to Cayman.
“When we speak about the tourism element of the hall of fame, nobody else in the industry internationally has anything like this,” he told the Cayman Compass. “This will be the first. There are other awards groups but they don’t have a physical presence right now. It’s all cyber. The potential is huge.”
Cayman has long had a reputation as a world-class dive destination. “Since the 60s, it has been a place to come for dive tourists,” said Leaney.
What this means is there is also “a huge back catalogue” of historical material on Cayman diving to draw on. “Nobody else really has that,” he said.
This year’s inductees
There will be four inductees at this year’s ceremony, tentatively scheduled for September.
They are: Jill Heinerth (Canada), Tom Ingram (USA), Avi Kapfler (Israel, for Cocos Island) and Jim Gatacre (Canada).
Also, Divers Alert Network (USA) will be recognised in the Pioneer Category.
They were all originally supposed to be the 2020 inductees, but with Cayman’s borders closed, and later travel and testing restrictions making it difficult for people to visit the islands, the directors of the hall of fame decided to wait for an in-person ceremony, rather than hold it virtually.
So far, more than 100 divers from 32 countries have been inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame.
Related Videos
