I met him in spring 2005. We were working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We had the opportunity to go scuba diving in the Red Sea. I hadn’t been diving since 1978, but since I still had my cert card, the dive shop rented the equipment to me. I had to watch Hani rig his gear, since I had about forgotten how to do everything.

As we were about to enter the water I told him, in the interests of full disclosure, this would be my first dive in 27 years. I thought he was going to choke on his regulator.

But, we had a great one hour dive. Went to 18 meters. Saw thousands of fish and corals. AND we used EXACTLY the same amount of air.

Last year we followed up with a couple frigid dives on the Greek, Roman and Pharaonic ruins off Alexandria, Egypt.