James Draker

Draker teaches IANTD and TDI out of Evolved Diving in north Florida cave country, and the thing he is named for most often is sidemount. Asked for sidemount cave instructors, r/scuba returns "james draker, ken sallot, chris brock"; asked for sidemount instructors generally, ScubaBoard puts him first; and he recorded an episode of the Speaking Sidemount podcast on sidemount cave diving with Marissa Eckert. He and Eckert are also the xDeep dealers in north Florida, which is why they come up together when the question is about rigs rather than teaching. He appears in the standard shortlist for intro to cave and Cave 1 equivalents alongside Jon Bernot, and for cavern and intro in Florida alongside Terrence Tysall and Timmy Young. The second strand is rebreathers: he teaches on an unusually wide range of units, and is named on ScubaBoard as one of only a few instructors certified to teach a particular unit to 100m. He also runs instructor institutes — one thread describes him taking two candidates through an SF2 instructor institute and their student through the course alongside it. His reputation comes from forum recommendations and his credentials rather than detailed course reports, so ask for references from recent students.