Ken Sallot

Sallot teaches IANTD and TDI out of Gainesville, in north Florida cave country, and is one of the names that comes back most reliably when someone asks where to train. The consistency stands out: across ScubaBoard and r/scuba, over several years and from different posters, he is recommended for everything from cavern to rebreather work, and he is named in the same breath as Bill Oestreich and Joe Bosquez by High Springs locals and alongside Jim Wyatt, James Draker, Chris Brock and the Kierens by others. One poster calls him "an exceptional non-GUE instructor"; another, asked specifically about cavern, says to pick him and adds a warning against taking a PADI cavern course instead. He is also one of the instructors people are told to simply go and ask — he posts on ScubaBoard as @kensuf and answers technical questions there directly, to the point that threads about certification routes resolve with "reach out to Ken Sallot, he is on this forum", and his written article on cave DPV is used as course material elsewhere. He will also teach backmount, which narrows the field considerably. What is missing is a detailed course write-up: his reputation rests on how widely and how often he is recommended rather than on a blow-by-blow account of a week in the water.