The original version appeared on Zeimer.com on September 8, 2025. Photos courtesy of Eric Douglas.

Eric Douglas may not believe in reincarnation, but he’s led ten fascinating, overlapping lives. To put his career in perspective, some divers are photographers. A few are columnists or journalists. Fewer yet write novels. More are producing podcasts or documentaries.

This 58-year-old has harnessed his insatiable appetite for diving to educate his followers across multiple media channels regarding safety, environmentalism, protecting the ocean, and other threats to the industry.

On the 20^th anniversary of his first novel (“Cayman Cowboys”), we took a deep dive with Eric about his under- and above-water journeys, what motivated him, what he’s most passionate about, where he’s worked, what inspired his novels, how he ended up at a public radio station, and how it all led to him becoming a one-man publishing empire.

Eric’s original certification card from 1990. He learned to dive in Summersville Lake, West Virginia.

Chapter 1: Dreamer and Diver
Growing up in land-locked West Virginia, he was a curious kid who loved reading, riding and showing horses, swimming in Lake Chaweva, and especially dreaming about telling stories about the world and different cultures.

He read National Geographic Magazine, and gobbled up TV episodes of “The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau”. Those programs opened young Eric’s mind, heightened his focus, and fueled his desire for adventure and exploration.

After earning his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism at Marshall University, he asked himself, “What do I want to write about?” His journey into scuba diving in 1990 provided the answer.

He recently reflected, “I wanted to learn to dive. It was something I had dreamed of, and to be frank, I thought it would look cool on my resume. My girlfriend Cyndi told me about an Open Water scuba class at a local university. We took a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver class that summer, as well. I now know that diving set my career on a whole new trajectory, not that I would have realized it at first.”

He added, “While I was fascinated with the ocean by Cousteau at first, I saw diving as a means to an end to ultimately work for National Geographic. It was a way to explore the world and meet other cultures.”

Photographing Mayan ruins.

Chapter 2: Journalist and Photographer
But we all know that Life rarely lets us walk a straight line to pursue our dreams, and that’s exactly what happened to Eric. He got a bit sidetracked when the opportunity to visit Russia came up in 1993.

He was working as a reporter on the Metro Staff of the Charleston Gazette when he was invited to go to Russia with a group of educational professionals who were helping one of the cities outside of Moscow revamp its program.  This was shortly after the U.S.S.R. broke up, and he literally refinanced his car to pay for the trip.

“It was a pretty magical time,” he added. “I took seven trips there for a total of six months on the ground, learning about cultures and expanding my horizons, and honing my journalistic skills.”

After Eric’s second trip to Russia, he quit his job at an American newspaper and went back to the Soviet Union to live. Since he was building on his reputation and portfolio of stories, he was able to freelance with some success, publishing articles and photographs in a couple of magazines, including a Russian-language periodical that was based in New York City.

To this day, however, Eric has continued his love of photography, both above and below the surface, for his stories, books, and documentaries.

Eric loves diving in Florida.

Chapter 3: Divemaster and IDC Staff Instructor
In 1996, Eric felt the pull to get back to the ocean and diving. He began taking diving classes in Summersville Lake nearly every weekend, along with a few trips to Florida.

While he worked at PADI, Eric took advantage of the employee perk of free diving training, becoming a Divemaster in 1998. He quickly worked his way through the Instructor Development Course the following year and began teaching several staff members as Open Water and Advanced Divers, as well as dozens of students.

“I was really a sponge at that time, learning to do everything I could,” he reflected. “As an instructor, I picked up just about every PADI specialty instructor rating I could find anyone to teach me.”

During his first Advanced Open Water diver class, he was co-teaching with a fellow new instructor, and they were diving from a charter boat on Catalina Island.

“We were so confident going into that class, but the reality of wrangling a half dozen divers to 90 feet off a boat was a reality check. After that, I pitched a series of columns for the magazine to Karl called ‘After the I.E.’ (Instructor Examination), which was my way to talk about the challenges of teaching that they don’t really teach you as an instructor. I wrote that until I left PADI for DAN, and my friend took it over for a while.

“During that time, I did my first rescue, bringing an out-of-air diver to the surface. That changed the way I looked at a lot of things and piqued my interest in diving safety.”

Brooke and Eric.

One of Eric’s more interesting days was when Karl asked him to complete a diver’s training with pool work and Open Water certification. It turned out to be Brooke Burns who was on Baywatch at the time.

“She was a great student, and we had a lot of fun. We did her first two Open Water dives at the marine park on Catalina Island. She attracted attention, but then suddenly started telling people that I was the famous one because my picture was in the PADI “Go Dive Manual”. We did her second day of diving from the big, yellow Luhrs boat with Baywatch painted down the side that was used in the show. Michael ‘Newmie’ Newman from the show drove for us that day.”

Chapter 4: Tech Writer for PADI
Most journalism majors are fortunate to land a job in their chosen field; Eric continued to soar. His early experiences deeply embedded his psyche into the diving industry.

As part of Eric’s overlapping careers, while finishing up his Divemaster rating in 1998, he noticed that PADI was hiring an Associate Editor for its quarterly print magazine, The Undersea Journal. Because he was mostly a freshwater and East Coast diver, Eric thought he didn’t have the diving credentials PADI was looking for at the time as a staff writer. But his new boss, Karl Shreeves, its editor in Rancho Santa Margarita, said he was impressed with Eric’s Russian work as well as his writing abilities. So, Eric suddenly moved to Southern California.

“I really feel like I became a true diver there. We were diving all the time, taking mornings to go shore diving at Shaw’s Cove or running over to Catalina Island in the Channel Islands. I was lucky enough to be part of DSAT (Diving Science and Technology, a corporate affiliate of PADI, that develops the organization’s training materials) as well, so I got to participate in training videos and photo shoots for manuals.”

As a human sponge, he soaked up every bit of knowledge he could get there. Over two years at The Undersea Journal, he became an Associate Editor and an IDC Staff Instructor.

Eric performing simulated CPR on an injured diver during the filming of a DAN training video.

Chapter 5: DMT
Next, in 1998 while working for PADI, Eric was intrigued by the Diving Medical Technician (DMT) rating. “I was deeply interested in the science of diving physiology and figured that was a great way to learn. I ended up taking an EMT class at a local college and then studying in the Emergency Diving Accident Management Course with Karl Huggins.”

When he became a certified diving paramedic through the National Board of Diving & Hyperbaric Medical Technology, Eric functioned as the eyes, ears, and hands of the diving medicine physician. In that capacity, he could treat injured divers in the field, and learned how to serve as an operator or tender in a hyperbaric chamber.

Eric and Dan Orr before a DEMA Show Awards Gala when then-DAN President Dr. Peter Bennett received the Reaching Out Award. (2007)

Chapter 6: Education Director for DAN
That dive medicine experience helped him considerably, as Education Director at Divers Alert Network, where he created and updated training programs from 2000 to 2011, though he remained a PADI instructor through 2012.

At DAN, he was constantly teaching those programs, issuing more than 1,500 certifications at all levels from diver through Instructor Trainer.

He even developed dive safety program curricula from start to finish, including the text for the student handbooks, instructor manuals, created an online training component, and then showcased his public speaking skills by teaching the curriculum he created. As an engaging storyteller, honed through his journalistic background, his natural wit and humor entertained his diving students.

Better yet, after he moved to North Carolina to work for DAN, Eric started receiving invitations to travel and conduct training all over the world. His final title when he left DAN was Director of Education. More importantly, though, he had visited so many places, in the US and around the world, it opened his eyes even further.

Where PADI had been more about the adventure, DAN was about the science of diving. Working with industry luminaries like Drs. Richard Vann, Petar Denoble, and Peter Bennett really helped him understand what’s going on with our bodies when we dive.

Dan Orr, former President, said, “During his long tenure at DAN, Eric clearly demonstrated his commitment to our organization, our mission, and the education of divers and educators. A key leader in our educational team, I found him to be exceptionally creative.”

Eric’s first novel was published in 2005.

Chapter 7: Book Author
Throughout his scuba diving articles and columns, Eric always understood that teaching people to value the ocean was the first step to protecting it.

A friend once told him about her Master’s thesis in which she quantified the economic value of sharks from a tourism perspective. She said, “Divers will pay to see, and dive with, sharks.” That conversation left an impression on him.

“My literary muses were Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt. When I worked at DAN, I visited Grand Cayman for training and sales calls with my friend Steve. This experience led me to write my first novel in 2005, “Cayman Cowboys”, featuring a character named Mike Scott. I envisioned a series like James Bond that was inspired by a college friend, Michael Scott Burnsworth, who passed away due to cancer.”

Eric initially wrote the novels as a personal endeavor rather than seeking fame and riches. His overarching goal was to expose people to diving through his stories, similar to Jacques Cousteau and Mike Nelson from the TV show “Sea Hunt”.

All stories are based on his experiences, culled from about 1,000 dives, mostly in his native West Virginia, the Caribbean, and Southern California. The recurring themes that have attracted an ever-growing audience combine scuba diving, environmental, and ocean conservation themes. Each book takes about a year and a half to write and self-publish. 

See the sidebar of Eric’s books, documentaries, podcasts, and more, to review his titles for purchase. His twelfth Mike Scott novel is due out later this year. 

A half-dozen “Lessons for Life” columns.

Chapter 8: Columnist for Scuba Diving Magazine
In 2009, Eric then became a columnist for Scuba Diving Magazine and wrote its popular accident analysis monthly “Lessons for Life” column. A combination of diving accident diagnoses with heavy doses of common sense, his last story was published in the January/February 2025 issue after more than 15 years.

He candidly adds, “I wish I could take credit for that column. I’m actually the third writer who took it on, but I wrote it, by far, the longest. It was already established when the magazine changed hands from Rodale’s to Bonnier. When that happened, the new editor at the time asked me to take it over and I wrote it for 15 years. After my experience at DAN working on oxygen first aid, field medicine, and dive accident studies, along with my own experiences in dive accident rescues, the column was a natural fit.

So many of the columns came from his personal experiences. He would visualize things happening at Summersville Lake where he learned to dive. Or someone struggling at depth near Catalina Island. Or even getting lost on a dive in the Florida Keys. His writing style for these columns was very visual, and he could see the accident in every column happening while he was writing about it.

Recent columns were titled, “The Deadly Risk of Neglecting Your Air”, “The Danger of Losing Your Dive Weights”, “What Happens if You Miss a Decompression Stop?”, “The Risks of Task Overloading While Diving”, “Why You Should Never Skip Freediving Safety Protocols”, and “What Does It Mean When You Have Post-Dive Ear Pain?”

Of his 130 columns, Eric said, “I’m very fortunate. It’s been quite a run”.

Chapter 9: News Director and Podcaster
Eric is currently the News Director of Broadcasting for West Virginia Public Broadcasting in Charleston––a statewide licensee for both radio and television.

He told me that he got into radio sort of sideways. He moved back to his hometown after DAN and decided to begin an oral history documentary project on war veterans. After that, he took a job working on the radio news magazine show Inside Appalachia while he continued writing his books.

The rest just happened. He got one promotion, then another, and he was suddenly in charge. He enjoys being back in the “news game”, by producing podcasts and managing on-air news.

But Eric’s future will contain many more books (he’s working on his 12^th novel now, due out this holiday season), plus short stories, podcasts, and the like, as he continues to share his love of diving and ocean conservation with future generations.

Eric in Honduras to film “Cheap Lobster”.

Chapter 10: Documentarian
After completing a program at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Eric dove headlong into documentary work, because his skills as a content creator are seemingly endless. He recently completed a few more projects.

A few in particular include For Cheap Lobster––Eric and a documentary crew from NBC interviewed harvesting divers, including Moskito native people in Honduras, who live in small villages in remote places worldwide.

West Virginia Voices of War is a multimedia documentary that combines audio recordings with still portraits of each veteran. Common Valor is Eric’s companion book to this documentary.

Eric adds, “To say this is the biggest project I have taken on would be an understatement. I traveled more than 2,000 miles and collected 50 hours’ worth of oral histories from 46 West Virginia veterans about every major conflict since World War II and a number of smaller peace-keeping and humanitarian missions. It took 15 months and somewhere over 500 hours.”

Finally, his most recent audio documentary is about a sport very close to his heart. Batter Up, Baseball in Charleston is based on the memories of people who have attended––and played in––the games over the years at Watt Powell Park.

This diving selfie with his Dad is one of Eric’s other favorite dives.

Appendix: Eric’s Favorite Dives
Finally, after 35 years and about 1,000 dives, Eric is often asked “What is your favorite dive?” I often say that SoCal kelp diving is really amazing. That’s where I really cut my teeth as a diver. Colder water, drysuits or heavy wetsuits, shore diving, and climbing over rocks at Catalina, but the beauty of a world I had only seen on television.

“But as far as favorite types of diving, wreck diving has always held me. I think that’s where my imagination and curiosity really kick in. When I’m diving on a wreck, I’m curious to know what happened to cause the wreck in the first place.

For example, when he’s diving on wrecks off North Carolina with torpedo holes in them, Eric starts to wonder what the crew felt when it happened. What was their last experience on the ship? He wants to understand the human element, its relationship to the ocean, and his imagination in telling his stories.

He concludes, “It’s rare for me to surface from a dive on a wreck and not have a story in mind. There are times I feel like I am writing throughout the dive. I’m present and aware, but I’m having a conversation with myself about a new story that is itching to come out.

“I regularly head up to Summersville Lake where I originally learned to dive to go blow some bubbles and enjoy being weightless. That’s a feeling I will never get over. And it always feels good to return to my roots. The lake is great, 20+ feet of visibility in the summer. It goes about 300 feet deep, but that’s just dark and cold with nothing to see.”

Eric’s Lists of Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Other Projects

A couple of scenes in the novel “Held Hostage” take place at one of Eric’s favorite hangouts— the Outer Banks Brewing Station. Here, Eric is dropping off a couple of copies to the owner.

11 Novels Published to Date
Besides being a prolific author, Eric excels at promoting his books on his website: BooksByEric.com.

Each novel is listed below, from the earliest in 2005 to the most recent:

• Cayman Cowboys: Reefs Under Pressure
• Flooding Hollywood: Fanatics at The Dam
• Guardians’ Keep: Mystery Below The Adriatic
• Wreck of The Huron: Cuban Secrets
• Heart of The Maya: Murder for The Gods
• Return to Cayman: Paradise Held Hostage
• Oil and Water: Crash in Curacao
• The 3^rd Key: Sharks in The Water
• Turks and Chaos: Hostile Waters
• Water Crisis: Day Zero
• And the latest Held Hostage: Search for The Juncal.
• Stay tuned for Mike Scott novel #12 to be published in time for the holidays.

More Fiction Books
But that’s not all that Eric writes in the fiction genre. He’s branched out in recent years to pepper his collection with other stories, though all are about the underwater world.

Tales from Withrow Key is an anthology of thriller short stories with interesting characters who live on a fictional island in the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys:

• Going Down with the Ship
• Bait and Switch
• Put It Back
• Frog Head Key
• Queen Conch
• Sea Monster
• Caesar’s Gold
• Life Under The Sea

Sea Turtle Rescue and Other Stories is a collection that he wrote with, and for, his young daughters when they were six and eight.

River Town is a compilation of stories set in 1890s West Virginia.

Real Thugs: A Cult of Murder –– An Agent AJ West Mystery.

Eric took a dive in the DEMA show pool with Greg (The Divemaster) Holt from Scuba Radio when he returned to diving after open-heart surgery. Eric had the same surgery a year before Greg, so it was an important day for both of them. Eric wrote about his experience on his website and for Scuba Diving magazine. Read it here:  https://www.sportdiver.com/heart-disease-and-diving-first-signs-and-surgery

Nonfiction Books
Because of his notoriety in the scuba industry and even close to home, Eric has met true-life heroes who’ve touched his heart. He’s paid them back by penning nonfiction works about various chapters of their lives and his own.

• Dive-Abled: The Leo Morales Story
• Russia: The New Age
• Heart Survivor: Recovery After Open-Heart Surgery
• Keep on, Keepin’ on: A Breast Cancer Survivor Story by Jean Hanna Davis and Eric Douglas
• Scuba Diving Safety by Dan Orr and Eric Douglas: This textbook is a survival guide for equipment malfunctions, hazardous environments, dangerous marine life, and much more.

Podcasts, Videos, and Other Projects

• For Cheap Lobster
• Common Valor
• Capturing Memories: How to Record Oral Histories
• Memories of The Valley
• Batter Up, Baseball in Charleston

Free Short Fiction Projects
If you want to sample a few of Eric’s short stories before buying a book or two, he posts short stories on his website that you can download for free.

• The Last Train to Glen Alum” Radio Drama
• Going to The Circus
• Poached: Fighting for Sea Turtles
• Short Dives: Sign up on Eric’s website to download three free Mike Scott short stories.

8) Eric and his wife Beverly, during the holidays in their hometown of Charleston, West Virginia.