Paul Heinerth

Heinerth is treated in the forums as a founding figure rather than simply a working instructor — one of the "cave gurus", named among people's two favourite instructors in threads that are otherwise arguments about agencies. He has taught since 1980 with roughly seven thousand cave dives logged, holds the NSS-CDS Instructor Evaluator rating, teaches CCR cave, and his exploration record — the 1987 and 1998 Wakulla projects, the latter on a Cis-Lunar MK5 — is cited more often than his classes, which is its own kind of reputation. The clearest signal of the teaching is who came through it: other cave instructors list him among the people they interned with while qualifying, and divers who got their cavern and intro certifications from him in the early 2000s still name him when the subject comes up two decades later. He teaches backmount and is listed among the instructors who do, alongside Mark Fowler and Ted McCoy — "all are good and friendly". A student who took Cave CCR with him "couldn't be happier", and a recent r/scuba post describes a few days with him clearing skills on a KISS Spirit. Several of the accounts mention teaching alongside Jill Heinerth in the earlier years. Most of what is written about him is affectionate and long-standing rather than recent and detailed — standing built over forty years.