Harry Averill

Averill is cited less as a current instructor than as one of the people who shaped cave training itself. He was NSS-CDS Cavern Diving Instructor and a consultant to PADI on the cavern course outline, is credited in the NSS Cavern Diving Manual alongside Wes Skiles and Mark Leonard, and around 2010 co-wrote PADI's distinctive-specialty cave course with Jeff Loflin — a course still in use. He is a respected NSS-CDS sponsor and a former GUE instructor, and teaches TDI out of Blue Grotto Dive Resort in north Florida. That standing carries into how divers talk about him now: one calls him "quite possibly the best cave diver trainer ever", in a post whose actual point was that Averill now refers his own enquiries elsewhere, these days to Chris Brock. Another names him among their favourite instructors from early cavern and cave training, and a thread specifically titled "Cavern and Basic Cave with Harry Averill" notes he is still teaching and "loves to tell his students about the stupid things recreational divers do in caves" — the register most of his coverage sits in. He also writes at length on ScubaBoard as Cave Diver Harry, including on what technical instructor candidates get wrong about gas consumption, which is where much of his current influence actually lands. His standing is largely historical and his influence continues; recent student write-ups are fewer.