Dive New Zealand

Diving Pioneers

An Interview with Ross McDonald

Ross McDonald Ross is a dear old chap, forever smiling and full of stories. He’s a big fellow tall, lean and remarkably fit for a man in his late 70s - and has been a guiding light in Nelson’s diving scene since it first began in the late 1950s. And even before that he was involved in the exciting early days of scuba and snorkelling in New Zealand. more

Jeff Clay: A dive in the 1950's

They say it’s a sure sign of old age when you start writing your memoirs! I catch up with Dive New Zealand occasionally, and with the plethora of new dive gear and methods available I thought it would be good to put on record where us old buggers have come from, before it’s too late. more

NZ Dive Pioneers

E. J. McCaffery, known to his friends as Mac, learned to dive in the late 1960s at the tender age of 52. Since then Mac has made up for his late start, logging hundreds of dives around most of the North Island. He still uses his original DCP (bladder-type decompression meter) and was 81 when he last dived at the Three Kings. Mac has lived at Matapouri Bay for the last eight years and gets out diving whenever he can. Mac, how did you first get into diving?