DIVE LOG DECEMBER 25 ISSUE 415

Vale Michael Menduno by David Strike

Vale Michael Menduno 14 th January 1952 – 3 rd October 2025 O n the 3 rd October 2025, Michael Menduno – one of modern diving’s most enigmatic personalities - died following a stroke. Despite a public persona as the person whose name will, forever, be synonymous with the advent of ‘Technical Diving’ (as a distinct category of diving) Michael was a complex character whose personal, and family life were known by very few. Including myself. The Michael, whom I knew, was a person who, if not bordering on genius, was remarkably close to doing so, and who – in my eyes - frequently crossed backwards and forwards between that narrow dividing line. A drop-out from High-School with – in his own words – “a weird school history”, Michael was an unashamed latter-day ‘hippie’, a fallen angel who, had he been born thirty-years earlier, would have risen to equal prominence alongside the likes of Mailer, Kerouac, and the poets and writers of the ‘beat’ generation. Always a keen swimmer, he was accepted as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, where he spent two-years before transferring to Stanford University Graduate school for four years. With MS degrees in Engineering Economic Systems and Mathematics already under his belt, he went on to become a PhD candidate working on Mathematics and Algebraic Topology. Having worked at the, Hopkins Marine Station (a division of Stanford University at Monterey Bay, in California) as a science diver, Michael discovered, in his words, his, “first ‘tek’ thingie”. And then came the intervening years, working, initially, for the US Senator for Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens, and the Office of Technology Assessment. Later, working in California’s, Silicon Valley (in marketing, strategic planning, financial planning & analysis) he spread his wings and, having established a consultancy business focussed on High-Tech start ups, became a writer with early stories about his diving experiences in Cozumel and Mexico.

With an abiding interest in Technology and the human spirit the eventual outcome was, in 1990, the launch of a magazine that was to mark a milestone event in diving’s rich history; ‘aquaCORP’. A publication whose major investor, Rod Stanley, was an Australian Commercial Diving Executive, ‘aquaCORP’ had a mixed history. Michael, as the Editor-in-Chief, had (and never lost) an overwhelming interest in diving technology, and the people who encouraged underwater exploration and discovery. Sadly, the magazine’s frequency fell short of subscriber’s expectations and, eventually, led to the

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DIVE LOG Australasia #415 - December ‘25

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