Kirk Krack - Feb TBD 2023, Marine Science Fiction into Marine Science Reality: How DEEP and its Sentinel underwater habitat will change the oceans and the future of exploration

Kirk Krack, well known ‘multi-disciplined diver’ most recently of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ fame, has joined UK based DEEP Research Labs and the DEEP Institute as they push forward to future of underwater exploration. NASA has built spaceships and trained astronauts, DEEP aims to do the same thing with their underwater habitat design called the Sentinel and their training programs called Aquan. DEEP is 70,000+ engineering hours into a 200m designed habitat capable of 30 days missions with 6 people. This habitat design is unique in that its expandable, redeployable and reconfigurable with a life span of 25-30 years. Additionally, DEEP is developing a line of submersibles to work hand-in-hand with the Sentinel habitat system.

About Kirk Krack:

Kirk Krack has been a leader in the field of diving for over three decades and has devoted his time enhancing opportunities for all in the water. Kirk has demonstrated his leadership and exploration in aquatics through various avenues including as an adventurer, educator, coach, camera operator, on-screen talent, stunt person, researcher, innovator, and entrepreneur. As an adventurer, Kirk has served as a lifeguard, swimming instructor and coach, recreational scuba instructor, mixed gas diving instructor, commercial diver, and a wilderness EMT. This has resulted in Kirk logging over 10,000 dives in some of the most extreme environments such as wrecks, caves, underneath ice, and in dangerous depths up to 550ft/168m, where the use of mixed gas and 6.5 hours of decompression time was the norm.

Kirk has led expeditions to many unexplored destinations, such as Truk Lagoon, employing Technical Scooter Freediving to explore WWII era Japanese wrecks on breath-hold. He has also travelled the world in front of and behind the camera on the Academy Award winning Feature Documentary ‘The Cove’ by the Oceanic Preservation Society, and their follow-up ‘Racing Extinction’. A motivational speaker, Kirk has presented for the American Academy of Underwater Sciences as well as the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society. Kirk is the Founder and President of the Performance Freediving International (PFI) system of education, where he has trained seven athletes to 23 world records, and dozens of athletes to 100's of national records in the sport of freediving. He has co-authored several scientific papers on freediving and previously coordinated the training for the Advanced Freediving Research Program at Simon Fraser University in the early 2000’s. Recently Kirk has pioneered the development of Technical Freediving and the use of oxygenated mixtures on breath-hold as ‘the right tool for the job’. He has also developed numerous procedures used around the world by many educational organizations today.

With a focus on forwarding human potential and the foundation of breathing and breath-control, Kirk pioneered multiple innovative and industry-first programs, including the Breath-Hold Survival and Breath-Hold Motivation programs, whilst training various elite Red Bull athletes. Seeing these complimentary skills, Kirk has been sought after by eight different Special Operations groups from three different countries for his Breath-Hold Special Operations course. Since 2001, Kirk has directed numerous freediving competitions around the world, including the AIDA Freediving World Championships in 2004 and most recently the Deja Blue competitions in the Cayman Islands. In 2016 Kirk was awarded the DAN Rolex Diver of the Year award for his dedication to the development of safety in freediving.

In 2017 Kirk started working with world renowned Film Director and ocean adventurer, James Cameron on his upcoming Avatar Sequels. In this role, Kirk is the specialist freediving consultant and safety expert, where he has coached various actors such as Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet, plus all stunt doubles and safety crews. Kirk has also worked on various other films with notable actors such Tom Cruise on Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and Margot Robbie on Suicide Squad.

Kirk has devoted his life to enhancing human potential and capacity in the water. He has always committed himself to likeminded professionals who also explore the boundaries of the impossible and are connected to the area of human potential and human factors. Therefore, he has joined the Liminal Collective, the global community united by a passion for human performance and the desire to enable humanity’s greatest endeavours. Kirk’s full time work is now as Human Performance Diver Lead for the UK based DEEP Research Labs and DEEP Institute.

Past Events

Donnie Reid - Dec 2nd 2023, Human Exploration in Deep Space; NASA's Pavilion Lake Research Project

Donnie Reid has been a SCUBA diver for over 30 years. During much of that time he has been intimately involved in the BC dive industry holding such positions as Director in the Underwater Council of BC, President of the Dive Industry Association of BC, Diving Safety Officer for the Vancouver Aquarium and lead for the last two Ocean Pioneer Award’s Dinners. Through his photography he became involved in numerous expeditions and research projects that have led to a Fellowship in the Explorers’ Club and Member of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.

Topic:

Extreme environments, such as space, present unique problems for the astronaut/scientist to work in. Not only is the scientist insulated from their environment, they are isolated from it as well. Deep space adds the issue of latency in communications to these other problems. The Pavilion Lake Research Project (a NASA astrobiology project) has been studying a small lake in the BC Interior; developing biosignatures, protocols and the training for the searching for life on Mars and other off-world bodies.

Suspended on the bottom of Pavilion Lake are the "fresh water corals"; these are really microbial structures; structures that open a window to Earth's ancient past and to possible life on other planets. NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) explored the lake with underwater robots, SCUBA divers and Nuytco's DeepWorker submersibles.

Phase One the Project was about the science of the microbial structures on the bottom of the lake. Phase Two overlaid the engineering required to send humans into deep space by using submersibles as the analogue. And Phase Three came back to using divers, researching the science, as the analogue.

Howard Robins - August 12th 2023, Turning Wrecks into Reefs

Howie is one of the original founding members of the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia (ARSBC) since its inception in 1989. After several successful projects he assumed the role of President in 2006. Howie has been an active diver since 1973. "It's been an exciting and interesting adventure." Tonight, his presentation will explain the processes that go into the making of artificial reefs and the many details that are a part of the adventure.

Samantha Schwann- July 8th 2023, Diving with Sharks, Researching and Photographing Apexs Predators

Samantha Schwann is an award-winning underwater photographic artist whose work concentrates on ecologically unique areas of the ocean, in a thoughtful approach to an increasingly urgent global conversation. She began diving in 1994 off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada and progressed to earn instructor ratings in both recreational and technical diving. Schwann’s artistic background was in sculpture (stone, paper, metal) prior to an introduction to photography in 2010, where she began with landscapes and abstracts. Her work is dedicated to ocean conservation since the acquisition of an underwater housing in 2015. Schwann’s work has exhibited in Canada, the USA and internationally. Her focus on shark conservation led to an appearance on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (“Sharks with Tracey Morgan”). In 2022, she was elected as a Member National into The Explorer’s Club, a professional multidisciplinary organization dedicated to the scientific exploration of land, sea, and space.

Kirk Krack - Nov 10th 2022, Technical Freediving and Avatar 2

Kirk is a global leader in the field of diving and exploration. Since 2017, Kirk has been the trainer and consultant for the cast and crew of the Avatar sequels by James Cameron. The production of the Avatar sequel was unique in the way in which so much of it was filmed underwater. Actors had to learn to hold their breath for extended periods in order to complete takes. Technical freediving allowed actors to use oxygenated mixtures breathed at the surface for safety, reducing exhaustion and helping with breath-hold comfort.

During this time, the Avatar team completed over a quarter-million freedives with their largest scene involving 26 people underwater on breath-hold times as long as 4.5min. No hypoxic events or black-outs occurred due to 'technical freediving' procedures being used.