SPEAKERS

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor is the Regional Sales & Training Director for Technical Diving International (TDI) and Scuba Diving International (SDI) for Australia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, East Timor & the Solomon Islands, a post he has held since 1998. He is an Instructor Trainer with TDI for Advanced Trimix, Overhead Environment, Advanced Wreck, Semi Closed Rebreathers and Advanced Gas Blending and is an Open Water Instructor Trainer for SDI.

He has been directly involved with the Recreational Dive Industry since 1994, sits on a number of Standards Australia committees and has been a Diving Instructor since 1991. He is a Past Founding Board Member of 'The Sydney Project' mixed gas diving team exploring sunken heritage in NSW and was Safety and Diving Officer for the joint Australian-Turkish team finding the Australian WW1 Submarine the AE2 off Gallipolli in 1997 and 1998.

In 1999 he founded and convened the acclaimed OZTeK Australasian Diving Technologies Exhibitions & Conferences that gather together the leaders in underwater explorations and technological developments from Australia and around the world. He ran OZTeK99 in Sydney, OZTeK2000 in Melbourne & OZTeK3 in Sydney in 2002 before partnering with David Strike in the successful OZTeK4 & OZTeK'07 Dive Shows in Sydney in 2005 & 2007, before moving on to focus on further developing TDI/SDI Australia,

Richard has been diving since 1987 and did his first Mixed Gas Trimix Dive in 1994. He has taught Technical Diving in Turkey, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, across Australia and in New Zealand. Being an avid Cave Diver Richard has dived the Jenolan & Wellington Caves in NSW, as well as Mt Gambier in South Australia and was one of the team that recovered the body of Dave Weaver from the Pearce Resurgence in New Zealand in 1997. He has lectured internationally on diving and is regularly published in Dive Magazines around the world.

Prior to his involvement with the Dive Industry Richard has had extensive background in Information Technology, Systems Development and Project Management. He is New Zealand born and now lives in Sydney.