The History of DiveR Fins
How commercial harvest diver Ray Powell wore out five or six sets of fins a season, started making his own in his garage, and built DiveR from there.
DiveR began more than 20 years ago with a commercial harvest diver named Ray Powell and a problem he kept paying for.
Ray made his living in the Coral Sea and the Barrier Reef area of far north Queensland, a long stretch of reef and open water where harvest divers do their work below the surface. The work meant long days in the water, and Ray enjoyed it. Those years gave him the chance to see some remarkable life under the sea. They also taught him how quickly a working diver goes through fins.
Working the Reef
For a diver in the water all day, the fins take the load. Every kick down, every kick along the reef and every kick back to the surface runs through the blade, day after day and season after season.
Ray pushed himself hard in the water, and his fins paid for it. He went through five or six sets every season.
I used to chew through fins like no tomorrow.
Over a few seasons, that adds up to a pile of worn-out fins and a steady drain on a diver's pay. Each new set meant more of his hard-earned money spent on fins that would go the same way. It happened year in and year out, and it wore thin. In the end Ray decided he could make a fin better than anything on the market at the time, one he would be happy to use himself.
The Garage Years
He started in his garage. Each attempt was a test: make a blade, find out what was wrong with it, and start again. Most of them failed. The failures kept coming for somewhere between a year and two years, and thousands of dollars in attempts that did not work ended up at the local tip. It was slow work, and it was expensive.
I was up to my neck in resins, carbon fibre and composite fibre.
Ray puts the breakthrough down to tenacity, a good bit of luck and a great deal of trial and error. Out of those garage years came one of the first DiveR blades, and the start of the company.
A Blade From 2000
Ray still has one of those early blades, and he holds it up in the video above. It dates from about 2000 or 2001, an old medium-hard concept blade from DiveR's first years. The blade is pale and weathered now, and in the video he points out the wear himself. More than two decades of UV and sunlight have left their mark, and the fibre has started to break down in places. It is still functional.
The fins that first sent him into the garage were worn out within a season. This one has outlasted all of them.
DiveR Today
Some 23 years on, DiveR is still making fins. Today the blades are made in a factory in Tweed Heads, on the New South Wales side of the Queensland border, a long way south of the waters where the idea started. The business that grew out of one diver's frustration now supplies a world market.
Each blade is made by hand, and the painted designs are the work of five artists: Naomi Gittoes, Tiani Dun, Karin Studer, Ashlee Jansen and Nadia Dora.
A diver who spent his days on the reef wanted a fin that would keep up with him, and when he could not buy one, he made it. More than 20 years later, the company he started is still making them.