Steve Straatsma
Southeastern Field Rep, Dive Rite, Inc.
Steve's Favorite Web Sites (Besides this one!)
www.thedecostop.com
Always interesting to hear what cave/tech divers are doing around the globe.
www.wetpixel.com
A great underwater photography site.
www.weatherunderground.com
Living on the Florida Gulf Coast, the Tropical Weather section is cruicial!
After growing up a “river rat”…water skiing, canoeing, sailing, and playing ice hockey on the Iowa River, Steve migrated south to Tampa, Florida in 1972 to attend the University of South Florida, studied Marine Zoology…AND became fascinated with the clear, blue pools of water that were Florida’s springs and sinks!
After getting open water certified in 1973 he and a couple college buddies proceeded to try dive every site they could find, playing the usual 1970’s Russian Roulette with the limited knowledge and gear available at the time (no training was available or known of at the time, see Sheck Exley’s “Caverns Measureless to Man” for a litany of mistakes that were duplicated and survived!). Understand that the cave community was very small, isolated, and somewhat possessive of skill and site knowledge at the time….it was thought that if you talked about cave diving, it would encourage untrained/ill-equipped divers to enter cave sites, and become more statistics.
However, in the late 70’s, Sheck’s book “Basic Cave Diving, a Blueprint for Survival”, as well as formalized training courses by the NACD and NSS-CDS, offered the opportunity for Steve to get certified in the activity…after more than 200 cave dives….. by non other than Mary Ellen Eckhoff, at the time the most experienced female cave diver/cave instructor in the world. He actually had the privileged to take Mary Ellen on his “graduation” dive to a spring she had never seen, Twin Dees, near Weeki Wachi, which she was quite impressed with.
Living in the Tampa Bay area in the 80’s, Steve became an NSS-CDS Cave Diving Instructor (#143), and taught cavern, cave, and underwater photography out of a shop he co-owned, Unique Sports. Having a lot of experience in “deep air” diving (no Trimix at the time) in sites like Eagle’s Nest, DiePolders, Twin Dees, 40-Fathom Sink and others, he was asked to be a guide at Sand Hills Ranch/DiePolders, where he was fortunate to be able to dive with peers and legends like Sheck, Dale Sweet, Will Walters, Steve Foreman, Jim Lockwood, Bill Stone, and many others. Larry Green was even one of his cave diving students, back in the day!
In the ‘90’s, Steve continued to dive, shoot underwater photos, took up Trimix (helium gooood!) and even had the chance to participate in several major cave diving exploration projects….. the WKPP and the Twin Dee’s exploration project….and now, in the present, the Weeki Wachi exploration project (ask Steve to tell you about his most memorable/scary dives…Weeki Wachi comes up twice!). With over 3500 cave dives, and 6000 total dives, he enjoys all types of diving (well, maybe not COLD water!), including sidemount and rebreathers, having recently being certified on the Dive Rite O2ptima rebreather (proving you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!).