Gary Gentile is awreck diver. It has been suggested that Gary Gentile may be the most experienced wreck diver in the world.[1] He has dived on the wreck of theSS Andrea Doria (sometimes referred to as the "Mount Everest" ofSCUBA diving) over 190 times,[2] and was the first diver to penetrate the first class dining room of the vessel. He was also part of the team of divers, along withBill Nagle, who recovered the ship's bell in 1985.[3]
During the early 1990s, Gentile pioneered the use ofmixed gases in wreck diving. He has also participated in expeditions to theSMS Ostfriesland at a depth of 380 feet (116 m), which would serve as the impetus for greater exploration of deep-water shipwrecks, and theRMS Lusitania at a depth of 300 feet (91 m).
He achieved fame within the diving community with his publication ofThe Advanced Wreck Diving Guide in 1988.[4] He also published the first book ontechnical diving,The Technical Diving Handbook, and the field began to gain recognition as a separate stratum of the sport from conventionalrecreational diving. In many of his books Gentile notes that before technical diving was recognised as a sub-stratum of the sport, divers who consciously engaged in planneddecompression diving were shunned bymajor diver training agencies as "gorilla divers".
Gentile was also instrumental in securing the rights of sport divers to dive on the wreck of theUSS Monitor. After eleven attempts to get a special use permit from theNational Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration he filed suit against the U.S. Department of Commerce and won.[5]
Gary Gentile has self-published 45 books. He has written several technical books relating to diving, as well as extensive documentation of theshipwrecks ofNorth America. He has also published a number offuturistic fantasy fictional works, although none of these have been a notable commercial success to date.
The publication of the 2004 bookShadow Divers,[6] aNew York Times bestseller, brought a huge amount of publicity to the North East American wreck diving community, and turned the two divers featured in the book,John Chatterton andRichie Kohler into media stars. Although the book only referred to Gary Gentile once (referring to him, at page 313 as "legendary wreck diver, Gary Gentile"[7]), he published a stinging rebuttal to the book entitledShadow Divers Exposed[8] in which he challenges the version of events in the original book and level of credit given to Kohler and Chatterton, and puts forward an alternative hypothesis for the sinking ofU-869.
Gentile's book divided the diving community between those who regarded it as a cheap shot, motivated by jealousy of the fame which Chatteron and Kohler had enjoyed as a result of the book, and those who believed it was a fair attempt to set the record straight and ensure that credit was given to others who had played a key role in identifying the submarine.[9]
^In the bookDeep Descent: Adventure and Death Diving the Andrea Doria by Kevin McMurray (ISBN0743400631) the view is expressed: "Of all aboard theWahoo, [Gary] Gentile was by far and away the most experienced deep-wreck diver in the group, if not in the world. Gentile had been diving the [Andrea]Doria since 1974 and had more dives logged on the ocean liner than anyone else."[1]
^Gary Gentile,The Advanced Wreck Diving Handbook,ISBN978-1-883056-29-2. This was a record at the time, although this was surpassed by Dan Crowell in 1999; Kevin McMurray,Deep Descent,ISBN978-0-7434-0063-3, at page 269.
^"Treasures of theAndrea Doria". Archived fromthe original on 2009-12-18. Retrieved2008-11-16. In the book,Shadow Divers,Robert Kurson indicates that the team had a "last man standing" arrangement, whereby the last one of them left alive would keep the bell.
^Much of the material was subsequently republished inThe Advanced Wreck Diving Handbook in 2007. In the latter book he commented that he eventually had to approach a non-diving publisher to publish the originalGuide, as reputable diving publishers were afraid to publish a book which talked openly aboutdecompression diving techniques.
^Kurson, Robert (2005).Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II. Ballantine Books.ISBN978-0-345-48247-1.
^Although the compliment was in the context of Gary Gentile telling John Chatterton that it would be impossible to confirm the identity of the wreck believed to be the freighterTexel from the name on the bow, only for Chatterton to prove him wrong.
^Gentile, Gary (2006).Shadow Divers Exposed: The Real Saga of the U-869. Bellerophon Bookworks.ISBN978-1-883056-24-7.
^The[2] customer reviews on Amazon.com give an excellent flavour of the dramatically different views taken of Gentile's book.
