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| CANADA |
| Phil Nuytten |
| Inventor, entrepreneur, explorer, President and founder of Nuytco Research Ltd and Can-Dive Services Ltd |
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An internationally recognised pioneer in the diving industry, Phil Nuytten has spent 40 years creating deepwater dive products that have opened the ocean’s depths to exploration and industry.
Through his companies, Nuytco and Can-Dive, he has developed the technology to allow longer-length diving expeditions with increased safety. Nuytten’s hard-suits – the Newtsuit and the Exosuit – and his deep-diving submersibles are renowned worldwide. His equipment has been used by the National Geographic Society and NASA, and is standard in nearly a dozen navies, worldwide. Contract work has taken him to oilfields, submarine construction sites and sunken wrecks around the world, including the Breadalbane, the northern-most known shipwreck, where his record dives through icy Arctic waters earned him a place on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in 1984.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Nuytten designed his first diving gear at age 11 and opened Western Canada’s first retail dive shop when he was in his teens. His attention to detail – crucial in deep-sea diving – was apparent as early as the age of 12, when he learned to carve in North-west Coast style. It is a craft about which he is still passionate. In 1982, he published “The Totem Carvers”, an illustrated study of three carvers from the Kwakiutl community in north-western British Columbia. A Métis (a descendant of Canadian aboriginals and French-Canadian fur traders), Nuytten has been adopted into the Kwakiutl tribe and is an advocate for indigenous people.
Nuytten holds two honorary doctorates and has received dozens of awards, including the Jules Verne Award for international accomplishments in the deep-sea field. “When I dive, I feel alive,” he says. “For me, everything else is just a surface interval.”
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