Gavin Anthony
For over 35 years Gavin was involved in research, development and assessment of diving systems and procedures for the Royal Navy. This included the development and assessment of re-breathers, creating active thermal protection systems and producing mix gas decompression Tables. He is involved in the development of standards and certification of diving equipment. A diver since 1970 he has qualified as an HSE pt III commercial diver and is a recreational instructor. He is a Trustee of DDRC Healthcare, Chairman of the British Sub-Aqua Jubilee Trust and provides technical support and advice to the BSAC, IMCA, ADC and other industry bodies. Currently a Director of GAVINS ltd he continues to support the diving industry as an independent Consultant for Diving and Life Support.
Dr Neil Banham
Neil has been a keen scuba diver since gaining his Open Water Certification at age 16.
Besides diving in Western Australia (Rottnest and Carnac Islands, Esperance, Rowley Shoals, Exmouth Navy Pier), he has dived some amazing places in Australia (Cocos Keeling Islands, Christmas Island, Lord Howe Island, Great Barrier Reef) and overseas (Palau, Bali, Dahab, Solomon Islands, PNG, Malaysia, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, South Africa- but not the UK….)- many of these overseas destinations with the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society (SPUMS).
Neil has been President of SPUMS since 2020 and convened their 2014 Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) in Bali and was Scientific Convenor for the 2024 ASM in Fiji which had a focus on patent foramen ovale (PFO) and diving and Immersion Pulmonary Oedema (IPO).
Neil is an emergency physician by trade but has also been working in diving and hyperbaric medicine most of his career. He was Director of Fremantle Hospital Hyperbaric Medicine Unit from 2009-2014 and then Director of the new state of the art Hyperbaric facility at Fiona Stanley Hospital, Perth from 2014 until the present.
Neil is widely published in diving and hyperbaric medicine and was part of the team that recently revised and published the SPUMS / UKDMC 2015 Position Statement on PFO and diving and for return to diving (or not!) following an episode of IPO. He is also a co-author on the recently published SPUMS Position Statement on Paediatric diving.
Roger Beer
Roger is a semi retired Consultant General Adult Psychiatrist working in South East Wales. He has been diving for 40 years, qualifying as a sport diver during his SHO jobs in Plymouth.
Pieter Bothma
Dr Pieter Bothma is the Chairman of the British Hyperbaric Association and currently represents the BHA on the European Committee for Hyperbaric Medicine Board of Representatives. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the European Underwater and Baromedical Society.
He is the Medical Director of the East of England Hyperbaric Unit at James Paget University Hospital (JPUH), a position he has held for the past 18 years and previously served as Medical Director of London Hyperbaric Medicine at Whipps Cross Hospital. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Bothma was the Clinical Lead for Intensive Care at JPUH, where he had also earlier held the role of Anaesthesia Lead.
His professional interests include patient safety and clinical governance, management of the difficult airway, the care of critically ill patients in the hyperbaric environment, and mortality studies. Since 2019, he has also been appointed as a Medical Examiner, working closely with regional coroners.
Dr Bothma’s research and publications are primarily in the fields of intensive care and hyperbaric medicine, with a particular focus on air embolism.
Emmanuel Gouin
Anesthesiologist and hyperbaric physician with a Master’s degree in Physiology Applied to Extreme Environments and an ongoing PhD. Independent researcher affiliated with the ORPHY laboratory at the University of Western Brittany (France), actively involved in several DAN US research projects as a contractor. Specialized in diving physiology, safety, and human performance, with additional qualifications as a technical (recreational and scientific) diver, as well as a certified recreational diving instructor. Also actively involved in deep diving expeditions in remote and challenging environments.
Robin Heij
Robin Heij is an anaesthetist and lead intensive care consultant working in the UK at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn. He has been involved in hyperbaric medicine for more than 10 years working regularly with London Hyperbaric Medicine in Great Yarmouth and East London. His interests are in day case surgery, patient safety and resident training.
Arthur Henderson
Surgeon Commander Arthur Henderson RN is an ENT consultant at the Royal United Hospitals, Bath, with a special interest in otology and occupational disease related to ENT.
He qualified from Guy’s King’s and St Thomas’ Medical school, completed a master’s degree with distinction in leadership whilst undertaking his higher surgical training in the Severn region. He received the Royal Society of Medicine Gold medal and completed the Diploma in Occupational Medicine, before undertaking a fellowship in lateral skull base and implant otology at St Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver.
He is Consultant Advisor for ENT to the Royal Navy and advisor on diving and aviation ENT across Defence. He is actively involved in ENT research, with an interest in eustachian tube dysfunction, alongside lecturing regularly on diving, aviation, and ENT.
As a Royal Navy Medical Officer he deployed with HMS Ark Royal and HMS Ocean along with Harrier 1(F) squadron and 814 NAS Merlin helicopters. He also spent time with the Fleet diving group as a diving medical officer, working as an instructor at the submarine escape training tank and as a member of the Submarine Parachute Assistance Group.
Paul Lyon
Paul is a Consultant Radiologist who performs thermal ablation of lung, liver and kidney tumours within Oxford University Hospital ’s thermal ablation team. Alongside his routine clinical practice in Radiology, Paul continues his strong research links with the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford, with research interests in therapeutic ultrasound and targeted drug delivery. Paul is an academic supervisor and the chief investigator for the SarcAblate trial which is currently looking at safety, feasibility and immune effects of HIFU ablation in soft tissue sarcoma. Paul currently has over 30 peer-reviewed research publications with a h-index of 12.
Richard Moon
Dr. Richard Moon earned BSc and MD degrees at McGill University. He trained in internal medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto, then in pulmonary and critical care medicine, followed by anesthesiology at Duke University. He joined the Duke University faculty in 1983. He is Professor of Anesthesiology, Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology. His research has included physiology of immersion, predictors of arterial PCO2 during underwater exercise, decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity mechanisms. He has been particularly interested in causes and prevention of immersion pulmonary edema, use of an experimental breathing gas (perfluoromethane) to decrease decompression requirements after heliox dives, mechanisms of death during triathlons, causes of perioperative opioid-induced respiratory depression, and improved monitoring techniques for monitoring patients to detect it.
Richard O’Regan
Richard O’Regan is Medical Advisor to Diving Ireland the National Governing Body for Scuba Diving and Snorkelling in Ireland.
He is an active sports diver / instructor (>100 dives/year) and outdoor swimmer.
Professionally he is retired from his post but still working in it 3 days a week as a part time locum consultant medical ophthalmologist. He is an AMED with the Health and Safety Authority Ireland and an AME with the Irish Aviation Authority. He undertook a GP trainee year in New Zealand where his interest in both diving and aviation medicine began because partners in the rural practice were involved in the same.
Mahmoud Saleh, MBChB
Graduated in 2020 from Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Egypt
Former anaesthetic trainee in Mansoura University Hospitals, Egypt
Currently working as senior clinical fellow in ICU in James Paget Hospital, Norfolk, UK
Areas of interest include resuscitation, airway & vascular access with teaching experience in those fields
Previous participation in national projects e.g. NEAT-ECHO
Phil Short
Phil has been diving professionally and exploring for over 35 years and has logged thousands of dives in caves and open water using open and closed circuit SCUBA and Commercial equipment. He is currently working at DEEP as Research Diving and Training Lead for a mission to 'Make Humans Aquatic' via 'Engineering Wonder' in the form of subsea Habitats.
Phil holds HSE Offshore Top Up and DMT Commercial Diving qualifications plus Swedish S-30 & Dive Supervisor Certification to support his role as a DSO. He is one of the foremost TDI & IANTD Instructor Trainers, an NSS-CDS Instructor and a member of the IANTD HQ Board of Advisors. He is a Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow of the Explorers Club.
He learned to dive in 1990, from a background of dry caving, to pass short flooded sections of dry caves. Having developed his technical skills, he began to use them for cave diving, his true passion, on expeditions to Mallorca, France, Spain, Canada, Russia, Greece and Mexico. He joined a 3 month project led by Bill Stone to pass sump 4 in the Cave J2 in Southern Mexico and explore the cave beyond during which he spent 45 days living underground.
He has served as Diving Operations Manager for Institutions including Lund University Sweden and WHOI and has been involved in Scientific projects including the survey and excavation of the Antikythera wreck, the Mentor wreck and the 1495 ship Gribshunden. He has supervised DPAA projects to survey, excavate and recover crew from WWII ditched aircraft.
Phil has been involved in film projects for ITV, BBC, Discovery, Channel 4 and NOVA.
Vivek Srivastava
Graduated from Armed Forces Medical College in India 1989 and was a military medic and then specialist Acute Medicine physician for about 2 decades, some of which in the Himalayan high altitude areas. Started work in the UK in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in 2006 and trained in diving medicine in 2007.
Moved to London and started working at London Hyperbaric Medicine in 2010.
Jed Talbot
Dr Jed Talbot is a Respiratory registrar in the East of England with experience working in both South Africa and UK. He has a particular interest in gas embolism and improving education to support early recognition. He has presented on this topic at the State of Art congress 2024 and published on gas embolism within the Journal of Intensive Care society.
William Thompson
William Thompson is a Diving Medical Officer in the Royal Navy. He studied Medicine at Newcastle University, working for two years in the North East prior to spending time deployed with various Navy/Army dive teams, and as doctor onboard HMS Dauntless. He sees military and civilian emergency and elective patients at the Hyperbaric Medicine Unit at St. Richard’s Hospital in Chichester. In his spare time he enjoys exploring his home county of Northumberland, cooking, and 35mm film photography.
Mark Turner
Mark Turner graduated from Bristol in 1990. He joined the Royal Navy as a Medical Officer and worked at the Institute of Naval Medicine and Submarine Escape Training Tank. He also worked as a Ship’s Diving Officer and Submarine Escape Instructor. Medical Training; MRCP 1996, General Cardiology in Plymouth, Cardiff and Miami leading to PhD in 2004. Trained in congenital heart disease Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCLH / Heart Hospital 2002-2005. Consultant Cardiologist at Bristol Heart Institute 2005-present with interest in congenital and structural intervention. HSE medical examiner.
Robert Weenink
Captain (Navy) Robert Weenink is a consultant anaesthetist employed by the Royal Netherlands Navy. Besides his regular clinical anaesthetic duties in the Amsterdam University Medical Center, he is involved in prehospital care as a helicopter emergency medical services physician. He received training in diving and aerospace medicine. As a hyperbaric anaesthetist, he regularly treats critically ill patients in the hyperbaric chamber of the Amsterdam UMC. Scientifically, he heads several research lines in diving and hyperbaric medicine, with a special interest in gas embolism.
Peter Wilmshurst
Peter is a consultant cardiologist. He has particular research interests in cardiac problems in divers, including immersion pulmonary oedema and the roles of cardiac and pulmonary shunts in aetiology of decompression illness. He has been a medical referee since 1977. In the 1970s and 1980s he was medical officer on a number of international diving expeditions.
Michael Woodward
Michael is a Foundation Year 2 Doctor currently on a clinical rotation at DDRC Healthcare. They studied medicine at Manchester University after completing a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at Sheffield University in 2019, with dissertations focussing on computational biomechanics and safe ventilation parameters in ICU patients.