Stuart Cove and Dr. Lee Somers to Receive DEMA’s 2013 Reaching Out Award

Honorees to be Recognized at the Beatles-Themed 2013 DEMA Awards Party Held at the Hard Rock Live Coliseum in Orlando, FL

The Dive Industry will “Come Together” on November 8, 2013, to celebrate the extraordinary careers of Stuart Cove and Dr. Lee Somers, the recipients of the 2013 DEMA Reaching Out Award (ROA). The newest inductees to DEMA’s Hall of Fame will be honored at this year’s Beatles-themed DEMA Awards Party taking place at the Hard Rock Live Coliseum in Orlando, FL. First presented in 1989, the ROA honors leaders in the diving community whose significant contributions to the sport have elevated the industry on all levels. This year’s recipients will be joining an extraordinary list of distinguished past Honorees.

Stuart Cove is known by most people in the Dive Industry for his work in the Bahamas and the impact it has had on the reputation of sharks. Born and raised in the Bahamas, Stuart has been exploring the waters of Nassau as a captain and dive guide his entire life.

Cove began his career in diving by working as a self-described “gofer” on a tourist snorkeling excursion when he was 10 years old. He left Western University in Canada in his second year to pursue his love of diving as a business. He started Coral Harbour Divers using a few tanks and one of his father’s boats to take tourists diving on the diverse sites of the Southwest side of New Providence.

In 1979, Cove was hired as a diver on the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only enabling him to buy his first boat. In 1983, he was offered the Watersports concession at the prestigious five-star Lyford Cay Club and his business boomed. The business was instantly a success, and Stuart and his wife acquired the South Ocean Golf and Beach Resort Dive Center in 1992 where the main operation is located today. Not only is Cove a pioneer within the Bahamas Dive Industry, he is also a significant force within Hollywood, having twice made “Hollywood’s 100 Most Influential People,” list for his work in many blockbuster movies and TV programs.

In 2010, Cove was the recipient of the prestigious Cacique Sustainable Tourism Environmental award by the Bahamas Government. That same year he founded “Children of the Reef,” a non-profit foundation that offers underprivileged children an opportunity to experience the local oceans and reefs. He is also responsible for placing 22 artificial reefs to date in the waters around New Providence, adding significantly to the wreck system in the Bahamas. For the past 10 years, he has served on the award-winning National Coastal Awareness Committee, and chaired the Clean-Up sub-committee. Aside from land-based initiatives, Cove has campaigned successfully to help create a ban on long-line fishing, and most recently, assisted the creation of the ban on shark fishing and finning in Bahamian national waters.

Dr. Lee Somers was one of the earliest certified scuba instructors in the U.S. He was dually certified by the YMCA Scuba Program and NAUI. From the beginning, Dr. Somers understood the importance of a comprehensive educational experience in scuba diving and developed such a program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Besides teaching courses that addressed virtually every facet of diving, he developed one of the most highly regarded instructor education programs. The program attracted instructor candidates from all over the globe and resulted in the certification of NAUI instructors representative of a “Who’s Who” in the contemporary diving world.

Having created the Research Diving Program at the University of Michigan, Dr. Somers was a scuba legend in the Midwest. He established a hyperbaric research facility at the University of Michigan, conducting some of the earliest pressure-related research as well as proving opportunities for countless recreational divers to experience a ‘chamber orientation,’ including pressurization in a hyperbaric chamber. He was the author of dozens of diver safety publications as part of the University of Michigan Diver Education Series, along with the Research Divers Manual and articles on a wide variety of topics from oceanography to diver education.

Dr. Somers has served our sport and Industry well and served as a member of the board of directors with many organizations including the AUAS, IANTD, NAUI, Our World Underwater and the Our World Underwater Scholarship Society. He has also been recognized by his peers as a past recipient of the NOGI Award for Sports/Education, the Leonard Greenstone Award for Diving Safety and the DAN/Rolex Diver of the Year. Dr. Somers has been a mentor to many of the leaders in the diving world today and is still sought out for advice on almost everything related to the sport or science of diving.

DEMA congratulates Stuart Cove and Dr. Lee Somers for their continued, life-long service to our Industry.

Further details about the 2013 DEMA Awards Party are available on the DEMA Show website where interested parties can purchase individual tickets from the DEMA Show registration system.  Large groups can reserve VIP tables of ten or VIP balcony suites for groups of 15-30 by contacting Colleen Vasquez at cvasquez@dema.org or (858) 616-6408 x106.  Unique sponsorship opportunities are also available.