SEAduction has a long history in the US and Global Dive Sports and Dive Profession
Starting in academia our facility specialized in offering for credit courses in kinesiology, scientific and other advanced diving classes, including instructor courses for colleges and universities in North Carolina and Virginia.
We were on the cutting edge of the technical diving phenomena, in 1994 we were one of about 20 facilities in the world training divers for Trimix, Deep Air, Rebreather, Deep Wrecks and Advanced Wreck Penetration and Cave Diving. One of our original owners, Mike Ange, would go on to write text books that would be used by TDI, SDI, NASE and SSI for the training of technical divers. Our World Class facility in NC saw the who’s who of diving explorers and technology adopters as we provided gas fills, technical services, advice and training that was simply not available in the vast majority of the dive industry. It’s no mistake that we were midway between the challenging wreck dives of the North East US and astounding wrecks, reefs and caves of Florida but we were also a mere 2 hours from the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Our staff cut its teeth on diving the crystal coast and diamond shoals. Mike would go on to work on the HQ staffs for TDI, NASE and as the Global Training Director for the technical diving division of the world’s second largest training agency, SSI.
In the mid 1990s we filled a need in our regional community with the offering of purpose specific training for public safety divers. Mike, a former law enforcement officer and volunteer fire rescue diver had a unique interest in keeping these divers safe. His work would see him become the public safety and cave diving training director for NASE which was at the time the host agency for the National Association of Police Divers. In 1999, his work was recognized by International Training (parent company of TDI and SDI) when they acquired some rights to his materials, appointed him as the International Training Director for ERDI, which would soon become the largest public safety training agency in the world.
Retail, products and excursions
SEAduction, would operate the retail facility in Dunn NC from 1993 through 2010 and would add a facility in Key West Florida that operated until 2012. Charter vessels on the coast of NC and in the tropical waters of Key West were also a part of the offering and Mike returned to SEAduction full time as a CAPT and Instructor until the closure of their road in Key West (for 39 months) forced closure of the KW facility. This would take Mike back to his roots for a few years as the Dive Safety Officer and Department Head for what was believed to be the largest science diving program in the world at Texas A&M University where he was based at the Galveston Campus.
In the mid 1990s Mike began working with manufacturers of diving equipment serving as a sales rep for several companies but 1999 saw him leave SEAduction full time to run the North and South American Division of Draeger Dive, which was at the time the only mass produced (non-military) rebreather company in the world. He would go on to launch Waterproof Wetsuits in North America (he ran the division for nearly a decade) and much later run the Global BARE Exposure Suit Division of Huish Outdoors where his designs made his division the most profitable in the company and garner the first international design award that BARE had seen in decades.