From: United Kingdom
Profession: technical diving instructor
Speciality: physiology of decompression

Mark had his first experience of diving at the age of 10 when he did a try-dive in a local pool. He was hooked from that point onwards. He learnt to dive in 1987 and has been diving ever since. He has dived in the Red Sea, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, California, Gulf of Mexico, …the Middle East, Caribbean and the Mediterranean. However he is most at home in the waters around the UK where there is some of the best wreck diving in the world.

Mark became an instructor in 1994 and has been actively instructing since then. In 2002 Mark set up Dive-Tech, a dedicated technical diving facility, with the intention of providing the highest quality technical diving training. He has been a full time diving instructor since then. Dive-Tech provides technical training at all levels up to and including CCR Advanced Mixed Gas Instructor Trainer. It also provides consultancy services to other diving organisations.

Mark is a TDI Instructor Trainer and a member of TDI’s Global Training Advisor Panel. He is a regular contributor to a number of diving magazines and a regular speaker at Diving conferences around the world. Mark represents TDI on the British Diving Safety Group and the HSE Recreational Diving Industry Committee as well as being a member of the Diver Training and Breathing Apparatus committees at the British Standards Institute.

In 2008 Mark published Deco for Divers, a widely acclaimed overview of the theory and physiology of decompression. This has quickly become the standard text on the subject and is recommended reading by a number of the technical diving agencies. Mark’s passion is wreck diving and spends all his spare time diving the wrecks around the coastline of the UK and abroad and has led expeditions to a wide range of locations around the world.

Presentations

2019

Training doesn’t work

“Most diving problems occur because people don’t listen to their training. This implies that there is a problem with the way we train divers. Either instructors are not getting the right messages over or students are failing to retain those messages. Either way the training hasn’t worked.” In this talk Mark Powell will look at why this is the case and what we can do to change the situation. If you have heard Mark speak before then you know that he will give an entertaining, thought provoking and informative view on this important topic. An in depth presentation direct from one of the biggest names in technical diving at this moment!