So, Who Writes Undercurrent?

"I'm a new subscriber and would like to know who are the people who write Undercurrent?" That question arrived in an unsigned email, and here is the answer.

Undercurrent is a non-profit organization. Several people contribute articles to Undercurrent, and we have many seasoned dive writers who pay their own way to travel to resorts and liveaboards and don't announce their purpose so they get no special treatment.

Our Senior Editor, John Bantin, was the technical editor for Diver magazine, Britain's most popular diving magazine, for 20 years. He used and reviewed virtually every piece of diving equipment available in the U.K. and the U.S., annually making 300 dives worldwide. He began his career as an advertising photographer and television commercials director. Diving became his career in 1992. He did a stint as the dive guide on a Red Sea liveaboard, traveling along the coasts of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Yemen, then ran a dive school on Mallorca before joining Diver magazine.

Ben Davison, the publisher and editor, founded Undercurrent in 1975 after being enticed to make his first international dive trip to Jamaica by a full-page article and advertisement in Skin Diver magazine. Expecting extraordinary fish-filled reefs, a beautiful beach, and an exceptional dive hotel, he found fish no larger than his finger, the pictured beach 30 miles away, and he was the only guest at the sleepy dive hotel. Back home, when he learned that advertising controlled the Skin Diver travel story content, he decided divers should not be fooled like he was. They needed an honest publication that took no advertising, and Undercurrent was born. Knowing an income only from subscribers could never produce much money, he built a fundraising consulting company with clients such as Greenpeace, the Cousteau Society, and the Sierra Club. Since he never keeps a dive log, he guesses he has written about 200 travel reviews, paying his own way, and traveling anonymously, never under his nom de plume.