Free Diving to Fame and Fortune

Download or read book Free Diving to Fame and Fortune written by Tony Buxton and published by Tony Buxton. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Setting himself up as a diving guide in Sri Lanka in the early 1950s, his services were in high demand by wealthy celebrities seeking new interests, especially spearfishing. Many invited him to their homes, leading to a lifestyle and fame that he hardly knew existed. Later both Hans Hass and Jacques Cousteau offered him employment. The diversity of his free diving experiences is fascinating. As the first person to dive in The Maldives, Thailand and Southern India, he became a diving legend. In 1965 he set out to sail around the world on a Chinese junk filmed by award-winning underwater photographer Ben Kropp and diving on virgin reefs with famed explorer Jacques Dumas. Finally, he became a highly successful commercial diver in Singapore. The different kinds of diving work he performed were astounding, including an underwater ship cleaning venture with Exxon, resulting in a fortune he never anticipated. Buying a leading hotel in Pattaya, Thailand he set up the first significant PADI diving outfit in the country. Branching out into many other businesses, he led a flamboyant lifestyle, counting Kings, Presidents and well-known film stars among his friends. Amazingly, he hardly ever used SCUBA for his work, but diving almost entirely without it achieved a lifestyle all but impossible today. Anyone interested in freediving should read this book.