Hal Watts: The passing of Mr Scuba

Another US titan of extreme diving has departed: Hal Watts died at the age of 88 in Ocala, Florida on 7 December. He had retired from diving following a series of eight strokes over recent years. 

Watts made his name through deep air diving, although when he started in the sport in the early 1960s there was little choice for recreational divers wanting to go deep but to do so on air and learn to manage the process as safely as possible. 

To that end Watts, who became known as “Mr Scuba”, is also associated with coining the best-known saying in the sport: “Plan your dive – dive your plan”.

This, he says, was simply adapted from the motto he had heard as a young private pilot: “Plan your flight – fly your plan.” When he had started in diving it was normal for the divers to take to the water without exchanging any words about what they intended to do while under water, he once said.

Small ad, big step

Watts was born on 10 June, 1935 and discovered scuba diving 20 years later while working for his master’s degree at John Marshall Law School in Atlanta, Georgia. He didn’t follow up on that single dive until six years later, by which time he had moved to Orlando, Florida. Noticing a small ad for used scuba-gear in a newspaper in 1961, he decided on a whim to buy it. 

The seller suggested that Watts read the US Navy Diving Manual before meeting him at a hotel swimming pool for a practical demonstration of the equipment. His first open-water dive using the kit was to a depth of about 15m on 22 February, 1962 in Crystal River, where he reported being spooked by a manatee, but by that time he was hooked on this new sport.

Later that same year he set up his shop Florida Diver’s Supply (FDS), from where he started training cave-divers and, from 1963, issuing the first FDS Cave Diver certification cards. 

The year he set up the school he was also offered the post of training director and first open-water instructor for the National Association of Skin Diving Schools (NASDS) by its founder John Gaffney, becoming NASDS’s sole trainer of cave-divers. 

That December Watts carried out what he said was his first deep dive, to 75m. Over the following years his speciality dive-club the Forty Fathom Scubapros would make a great many dives to that depth and beyond on air in Florida. 

In 1967 Watts set an official world record for deep air dives after reaching a depth of 119m, and in 1970 set a cave depth record of 127m. That year he also published the first instructor manual for extended range deep diving, and commissioned Ned DeLoach to produce the film Deep Diving in Wakulla Springs.

He would go on to train six other world record deep air divers, including his daughter Scarlett, who set a women’s record of 129m in 1999. That year British diver Mark Andrews also set the men’s record of 158m under Watts’s tuition. His boast was that as of the date 9/9/99 he had guided 55 divers to reach depths between 100m and 127m on air with no accidents occurring.

Early to the party

Watts was a co-founder with Tom Mount and six others of the Florida-based National Association for Cave Diving (NACD) in 1969. 

What had started as Florida Divers Supply had by that year evolved into Florida State Skindiving Schools (FSSS), with four locations in Florida and a Caribbean base in St Lucia. The FSSS was issuing Cave Diver certification cards from 1970. 

In 1988 it was renamed the Professional Scuba Association (PSA) and in 1995 went international as PSAI, an agency that could claim to have originated almost three decades earlier than any other that had offered certification at diver and instructor levels in both recreational sport and technical diving.

As an extended range instructor trainer for the PSAI, IANTD, NASE, NAUI, PDIC and TDI agencies, Watts was qualified to teach deep air, nitrox, extended-range nitrox, trimix, rebreathers, full-face mask, drysuit, cave, cavern, DPV and wreck penetration. He was an instructor evaluator/certifier for NASE, PDIC and SSI, a PADI master scuba diver trainer and a rebreather instructor-trainer for many makes of CCR.

Watts has also been credited with coming up with the idea of the octopus regulator, which he developed with Scubapro and Sportsways. 

Star wrecks

In 1990 Watts was one of the first recreational divers to dive the famed Civil War ironclad Monitor off the North Carolina coast with Gary Gentile, Billy Deans and Steve Bielinda, and he also dived the 75m-deep Andrea Doria off New York.

The Japanese wrecks at Truk Lagoon and the Lusitania liner in Ireland – against advice, he trained its owner Gregg Bemis to make a successful 90m dive on the wreck – completed his favourite wrecks list. 

Watts was an SSI Platinum Pro Award recipient with more than 10,000 dives under his belt when he retired from diving, retaining his stake in PSAI. Scuba Diver Editorial Director Mark Evans spent what he says was an entertaining week on board the Aqua Cat liveaboard in the Bahamas back in the mid-2000s with the famed diver and his wife Jan.

“Hal Watts was a true legend in technical-diving circles, holding a number of Guinness Book of World Records for deep diving, but he was also a true gentleman and a pleasure to be around,” he says.

“I fondly remember coming back from afternoon dives on the Aqua Cat to discover Hal and Jan lounging in the hammock on the rear sundeck, more often than not with an – empty – plate covered in cookie crumbs. We nicknamed him ‘Cookie Monster’ on that trip because of his predilection for the tasty treats!”

Hal Watts leaves behind his fifth wife Jan, to whom he had been married for 22 years, daughters Kirsten Stanford and Scarlett Watts, grandson Ryan Stanford and great-grandson Wyatt.

Also on Divernet: Diving colossus Tom Mount dies, Mono master-photographer Brooks dies, Stan Waterman: The man who loved sharks, Phil Nuytten, the deep-sea hardware wizard