Meet Your Instructors: Aquanauts Senior Staff Profiles
With more than 60 years combined professional experience, Aquanauts' senior instructor staff is the most-experienced in Central Thailand. Aquanauts is the also the only instructor-training facility in the region with two in-house Course Directors teaching courses from the center daily.
The staff is lead by Platinum Course Director Smith, founder and managing director of Aquanauts Dive Centre in Pattaya, who joined the elite ranks of PADI Course Directors in 2006. He and longtime Course Director John Taylor run Aquanauts' Instructor Development Courses.
The staff is rounded out by Master Instructor Gary Tytler, Aquanauts' other managing partner. Tytler oversees Aquanauts Divemaster development program and also instructs on the IDCs.
Roger M. Smith
A PADI instructor since 1989, Smith has built an impressive portfolio of professional certifications, allowiing him to train divers to the highest levels of recreational and technical diving.
In addition to being a PADI Platinum Course Director, Smithi is also an Emergency First Response Instructor Trainer and can train divers in all 26 PADI Specialty Courses.
His credentials go far beyond the PADI universe, however. Smith is an accomplished technical diving instructor, teaching SafeAir, Extended Range, Trimix, Technical Wreck, Gas Blending, Service Technician courses under ANDI, the fully-clloosed Evolution CCR through TDI and the Drager semi-closed rebreather.
Smith's portfolio also includes being an Instructor Trainer for DAN, the Divers Alert Netowrk. Smith can teach the full range of DAN courses, including being the only Advanced Oxygen First Aid and REMO2 instructor in Central Thailand.
John Taylor
John Taylor', affiliated with Aquanauts since 2001 and a senior staff member since 2005, has a diving career that spans several decades and continents. He Was a U.K. military diving supervisor in Belize, Cyprus and Gibraltar and has run PADI Instructor Development Courses in the United States, Middle East, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.
In addition to being a PADI Course Director, Taylor is also a DSAT trimix Instructor Trainer and semi-closed rebreather Instructor Trainer, an Instructor Trainer in all PADI standardized specialties, an EFR Instructor Trainer and a DAN Instructor Trainer.
Taylor has lived in Thailand for more than 15 years and is also the owner of an agriculture and cattle farm in eastern Thailand.
Gary Tytler
Involved with both military and PADI diving for more than 30 years, Tytler is the man who prepares Aquanauts interns to enter the Instructor Development Course. Directly managing intern development from the Resuce Diver through Divemaster phase, he makes sure that when interns reach the IDC, they're both mentally and physically ready to make the leap to instructor.
As a Master Instructor, Tytler is just one level below Course Director. He is also an EFR Instructor Trainer and certified to teach all PADI specialties.
