Phil Short - Team Reel Diving

Phil started diving in 1990 from a background of dry caving and climbing and at first only completed an Open Water Diver course in order to use SCUBA to pass short flooded sections of dry caves in Mendip and South Wales. At this time Phil became a member of the British Cave Diving Group (CDG) and attained Qualified Diver status. He then continued his open water training with Course Director Steve Axtell and in 1991 he qualified as a PADI Instructor and began teaching full time, working his way up to Master Instructor.
During this period Phill began developing his Technical Diving skills through training with IANTD and in 1993 was involved in forming one of the first Trimix wreck diving teams in the UK. He is now one of the world’s foremost IANTD Instructor Trainer Trainers in addition to being a member of the IANTD HQ Board of Advisors and was appointed the Training director of IANTD UK by Tom Mount in 2011.
Phil retains active Instructor status with IANTD, NSS/CDS, TDI & PADI and is an Instructor Trainer for IANTD & TDI.
Having devoted all his free time to developing his Technical skills, Phil began to use them for cave diving, his true passion, on expeditions to Mallorca, France, Spain, Russia, Greece and Mexico. At the same time, he began teaching first open then closed circuit technical diving full time for Phoenix Oceaneering.
Over the years, Phil has been involved in film projects for ITV, BBC, Discovery, Nova and Channel 4 on the M1 submarine, the shipwrecks from the battle of Jutland and cave diving projects in Northern Spain ‘The Road to Certain Death’ and the UK ‘Secret Underground’, the BBC series ‘Oceans’, the Movie ‘Sanctum’, a Discovery ‘Curiosity’ series documentary on the J2 Cave Project and a Documentary on the location and recovery of a WWII co-pilot from a downed B-24 Bomber off Vis in Croatia. He has also taken part as a closed circuit rebreather diver in several shipwreck search projects in the Western Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico.
Phil’s professional Diving activities include being DSO Diving Safety Officer on WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute), USA National Parks Service Submerged Cultural Resources, Lund University Sweden and DPAA Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency projects in Greece, Croatia and Sweden.
As an educator Phil has trained divers from groups such as the HSE, BBC, Police Dive teams, DSTL, NOAA, the US National Parks Service, WHOI and the Archaeological team from the National Museum of China.
Phil completed a 3 month expedition with Bill Stone to the mountains of Southern Mexico where he spent 45 days underground in 3 exploratory trips of 19, 5 and 21 days caving and diving to extend the J2/Last Bash cave system to over 10 kilometres in length and 1200 metres of depth passing sump 4 at 500 metres of length in 2013.
Phil has been diving professionally for 30 years and has logged over 6000 dives in caves and open water using both open and closed circuit equipment, with over 4000 dive hours on rebreather and is currently owner of Dark Water Exploration Ltd. and Diving Operations Manager for Lund University.
Phil is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) and a Fellow of the Explorers Club, holds the NSS-CDS Sheck Exley 1000 safe cave dives award and was Diver of the Conference at Tek Dive USA 2016.
Dark Water Exploration Ltd.
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