Team

Volunteer Committee and Prime Contractor

At the 2021 DEMA Show (Diving Equipment & Marketing Association), located in Las Vegas, Paul Guiver and Tony Sexton, Co Directors of Monument Projects Ltd, approached a long term friend, Leslie Leaney, to discuss the feasibility of building a 'Commercial Diver style' monument and installing it somewhere in California.

Leslie is a leading diving historian and founder of the United States Historical Diving Society. Unknown at the time, he had held a long-standing wish: To build a Monument to celebrate Santa Barbara's legacy as the birthplace of Deepwater Diving and to recognise the diving poineers of the past.

Paul and Tony, both former Royal Navy Mine Clearance Divers were already running a project to build a similar bronze statue, in recognition of Military Divers in the UK.

Paul's original company 'Divers Gifts & Collectables' had acted as the Prime Contractor for the highly successful 'MkV Monument Project' (JAKE) at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center in Panama City Beach, Florida; completing in 2012.

Further talks were carried out at DEMA with a cadre of interested people including Mike & John Morgan of Kirby Morgan Dive Systems International, and Don Barthelmess, an emeritus professor of the Marine Diving Technology Program at Santa Barbara City College who had also expressed a similar interest.

At a subsequent meeting at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum the newly formed Volunteer Committee of Leslie and Don officially shook hands with Paul and Tony and awarded the contract to deliver the 'The Deepwater Diving Monument' project.

Leslie Leaney

Co-Chair Deepwater Diving Monument

The Team's mission

"To design and fundraise a bronze diver sculpture/monument to the pioneering local divers, as a gift to the City of Santa Barbara Waterfront Department".

A monument to provide an enduring local attraction to confirm Santa Barbara harbor’s place in history as the birthplace of international deepwater ocean exploration.

Wider Project Team

In July 2023, Leslie & Don welcomed several new key members of the diving community to their newly formed committee. Their experience, wisdom and drive assisted in fund raising and taking the project forward moving into the production phase.