PSAI Awards Mark Andrews the Special and Unique Rating of
PSAI International Instructor Trainer Examiner
The PSAI Executive Board Members voted unanimously to award Mark Andrews a unique and well deserved rating of PSAI International Instructor Trainer Examiner. Mark has been in high demand by the PSAI Country Licensees. His experience, insight, contributions and accomplishments speak for themself. Congratulations Mark!
Mark was trained to dive in 1993 by his friend, work colleague and newly qualified PADI dive instructor John Bennett who would later go on to become the first recreational diver to make a successful dive to beyond 300m (1000’).
Mark became obsessed with diving and quickly rose through the recreational ranks wanting forever more and more knowledge culminating in him becoming a PADI instructor himself in 1997.
By now Mark was making deep air dives well beyond the accepted recreational dive limits and was visiting the Philippines annually to dive with John Bennett to be able to pursue his love of deep water.
During one such trip Mark was informed that a deep air dive he had made that day to 124m had broken the British record. Mark immediately wanted to know what the world record was!
With his heart set on gaining the world record for the deepest air dive Mark set about gathering information on the current holder and the history behind previous record holders. One name kept cropping up and that name was Hal Watts.
At this time Mark had no technical training and decided that he better start learning a little about the world of technical diving. He booked onto Advanced Nitrox training with Rob Palmer one of the worlds’ leading technical instructors but before Mark could receive his training Rob died in a tragic diving accident. Mark was trained by one of Robs training team and soon went on to obtain all the technical levels of training up to Advanced Trimix.
Mark was still very much occupied with obtaining the deep air world record and set out for Florida in 1998 to meet Hal Watts. After meeting Mark and seeing his dedication and determination Hal agreed to train Mark for the record attempt.
In July 1999 Mark achieved his goal and took the Record Air Dive with a dive to 156.4m (517’).
Mark was so impressed with PSAI and Hal that he decided to try and get the agency officially accepted in the UK. This process took two years having to convince the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that it met all the required safety standards. PSAI impressed the HSE with its policy on safety and performance based certification standards and in 2000 PSAI became a new official training agency within the UK, with sanctioned air training to 73m (240’).
Mark returned to train with Hal over the next few years and worked his way up to become a PSAI Instructor Trainer Examiner.
Mark continued with his love for deep diving and in 2005 along with fellow technical instructor Leigh Cunningham discovered the main wreckage of the “Yolanda” in the Red Sea breaking the world record for the deepest ship wreck dive with a mixed gas dive to 205m (677’).
Mark has worked as technical director for several high profile dive centres and continues to be involved in developing the sport of technical diving having written several PSAI training programmes and has many more projects in the pipeline.
Mark states that by far his greatest achievement was to marry in 2010 his partner of 12 years Emma who has been by his side through all the years of disappearing off training and deep diving projects without so much as a complaint, a lot of worrying but never a complaint.
Mark now teaches all over the world and has based himself once again in the UK where he can ride his beloved motorcycles and dive the many wrecks of the British Isles.
