Jon Bernot

Bernot teaches cave and JJ-CCR at Cave Country Dive Shop in High Springs, and what stands out is how often the recommendation comes from other instructors rather than from students. One poster listing Florida cave instructors qualifies the list as "people that I have personally co-taught with and seen in the water" and puts him first. Another thread is titled, straightforwardly, "GUE instructor or Jon Bernot?" — and the answer given is that he is "probably one of the Tech/Cave instructors out there who is delivering DIR training at the same level to GUE tech/cave instructors", which is an unusual thing to be said about someone outside that agency. r/scuba calls him "considered one of the top instructors in cave country". He teaches backmount doubles, which puts him on the short list people reach for when they do not want to be required into sidemount. Students who did their JJ-CCR and cavern/intro with him come back for full cave and CCR cave, and one writes warmly about the shop as a whole — him, his wife Christy, and the staff. There is no long course report, but his recommendations come from an unusual source: he is the instructor other cave instructors name.