In the early 1970s, Paul Humann was an attorney with a busy practice in Wichita. On his vacations, he acted as a tour escort for diving vacations offered by See & Sea Travel of San Francisco.
In 1973, Paul made a call to Dewey Bergman of See & Sea, expressing a vague desire to leave the practice of law and go into the diving business.
See & Sea put Paul in touch with the famed Bob Soto in Grand Cayman, where Bob had begun offering diving from an old 80-foot air-sea rescue vessel called M.V. Cayman Diver.
Paul Humann bought the Cayman Diver, remodeled it as much as he could and captained it for one-week dive cruises for the rest of the decade. Along the way, Paul revolutionized diving vacations. Living for a week on board the Cayman Diver, See & Sea clients dove all around Grand Cayman and Little Cayman. They packed in more diving (especially night dives) than were standard in the industry
Paul offered cruises from Cayman to Roatan, crowning adventures in those days for the most adventurous divers. Divers who experienced live-aboard diving as Paul offered it were converted forever, many going on to enjoy other live-aboard all around the world.
Paul retired from skippering dive cruises, and the old Cayman Diver was replaced by the first of a new fleet, the Cayman Aggressor.
In 1989, Paul published his first reef guide (to Caribbean reef fishes) with Ned DeLoach’s New World Publications. Paul has gone on to author guides on fish and invertebrates in the Caribbean, Baja, the Galapagos, the northwest coast of the U.S. and the tropical Pacific.
A long and productive career was triggered by a single fortuitous phone call; Paul Humann has added immeasurably to divers’ base of knowledge as few others have.