Tom Steiner van den Ouweelen
Tom was born in 1965, in Switzerland, 1 km from Bulle (which means Bubble in French!)... He speaks and writes fluently 6 languages (EN, F, D, SP, NL & HUNG) and has some good Arabic knowledge. Tom started diving at the age of 16 with an intro dive in Barbados during a holiday, and after returning to Switzerland he decided to start his diving education in Lake Geneva [Montreux]
90% of all of his diving education took place in the cold and dark Swiss lakes and 10% in the Mediterranean Sea, starting with CMAS and finally PADI, TDI, SDI, EDA, NRC, IANTD, BSAC, PROTEC and IATA (International Advanced Training Association) Instructor.
After 20 years of professional diving he has over 8'200 dives and totaled an amount of 2'500 hours on SCR, mCCR & eCCR Rebreathers. Tom has been working all over the world in the diving industry and has also attended many international dive shows.
He is today an EDA Examinator, CMAS M*** Course Director & Examinator, TDI, SDI and PROTEC Course Director, PADI Master Instructor, PADI TECREC (DSAT) Instructor Trainer, Master Freediving Instructor and finally a BSAC & IANTD Instructor. Tom is specialised in training Instructors in the technical field and his passion is Technical Diving, Rebreathers, Nitrox, Trimix and Gas Blending.
He has been training Instructors all over the planet and is one of the
most experienced Diving Instructor Trainer's worldwide. Tom has trained Astronauts at the ESA (European Space Agency) and the Greek Navy and Coast Guards on Rebreather.
He also organised the AIDA Free Diving World Championship at Lake Geneva in 2000, where his team were responsible for the safety of 48 free divers, spending 4 hours non-stop underwater at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius, he was also safety diver for Loic Leferme & Fred Buyle and now for Sarah Campbell (freedivers).
He is also safety diver for Pascal Bernabe and assist him during his training sessions and deep trimix courses. (world record holder of the deepest dive 330 meters below sea level).
The second worldwide Reefball project by PADI is also one of his
projects. His 'know how' in Draeger Rebreather means that the Draeger Maintenance and Technology Seminar is one of the most amazing courses that you can take with him. He is also CCR Instructor (Rec and Tec) on one of the most versatile and reliable rebreather of the market "the Voyager Modular".
Tom has also trained Instructors from the most famous dive centres in
the world, including Sinai Divers (Sharm el Sheikh), Sam's Tours
(Palau), Hippoconsulting (France), Euro Divers (Maldives), Sea Explorer (Maldives), Sinai Dive Club (Sharm el Sheikh) and Scuba-Shop's (Switzerland), Deepquest (Switzerland) and many others... He has also worked in collaboration with National Geographic, and trained on Draeger SCR the world famous hyperbarist Dr. Slostman Daniel...
He has also written and translated books about Rebreather and Nitrox,
posted some interesting reviews on the Internet about diving, and there you'll also find by him some interesting maps from the best dive sites of lake Geneva.
Tom dives exclusively with Apeks products in regulators, Draeger
(Dolphin), Azimuth (OMG), Inspiration and Voyager CCR (HBTechnology) in rebreathers, Apex and Custom Divers in BCD's, Heinrichs Weikamp DR5 and Sherwater Pursuit dive computers. His fins which he never changes are his Dive System old school fins...