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2024 DEMA Show
Nov 19 - Nov 22
DAN IS HERE FOR YOU
Since 1980, DAN has worked tirelessly to promote dive safety — operating the 24/7 DAN Emergency Hotline, conducting dive medical research, and collaborating with stakeholders throughout the industry to establish best practices for safe operations. Today, thanks to the support of divers, training agencies, dive pros, and dive businesses, DAN is stronger than ever.
DAN will exhibit at booth #3036 during DEMA Show 2024. Held in Las Vegas from November 19–22, this year’s event will bring together professionals from the dive, travel, and water sports industries. Recognized as the largest trade-only event in the dive industry, DEMA anticipates hosting over 500 exhibitors and thousands of professionals.
To learn more and register to attend, visit DEMAShow.com.
Seminar Schedule
All seminars are held in room S229
(Click on date to open)
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19
| SESSION TITLE | TIME |
|---|---|
| Safety on Liveaboards | 9am – 10am |
| Fitness to Dive at the Dive Shop: Handling Last-Minute Uncertainty | 10am – 11am |
| How Feasible is Personalized Decompression? | 11am – 12pm |
| Living Well with Dive Computers | 12pm – 1pm |
| 2025 DAN Instructor, Instructor Trainer, and Examiner Update | 1pm – 2pm |
| Everything You Need To Know About DAN | 2pm – 3pm |
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20
| SESSION TITLE | TIME |
|---|---|
| How Feasible is Personalized Decompression? | 9am – 10am |
| Sun Exposure: UV Radiation | 10am – 11am |
| Hazards of Rebreather Diving | 11am – 12pm |
| Mild DCI, In-Water Recompression, and When to Freak Out: Dos and Don’ts | 12pm – 1pm |
| Environmentally Friendly Dive Operations | 1pm – 2pm |
| DAN Global Initiatives | 2pm-3pm |
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21
| SESSION TITLE | TIME |
|---|---|
| Living Well with Dive Computers | 9am – 10am |
| Drowning from the Inside: The Ins, Outs, and Unknowns of IPE | 10am – 11am |
| Safety on Liveaboards | 11am – 12pm |
| Hazards of Rebreather Diving | 12pm – 1pm |
| 2025 DAN Instructor, Instructor Trainer, and Examiner Update | 1pm – 2pm |
| Everything You Need To Know About DAN | 2pm – 3pm |
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22
| SESSION TITLE | TIME |
|---|---|
| Fitness to Dive at the Dive Shop: Handling Last-Minute Uncertainty | 9am –10am |
| Sun Exposure: UV Radiation | 10am – 11am |
| Drowning from the Inside: The Ins, Outs, and Unknowns of IPE | 11am – 12pm |
| Mild DCI, In-Water Recompression, and When to Freak Out: Dos and Don’ts | 12pm – 1pm |
| Environmentally Friendly Dive Operations | 1pm – 2pm |
Seminar Descriptions
Safety on Liveaboards
By Francois Burman, PE MSc
In recent years we’ve heard numerous reports of liveaboard calamities, but there are more that go unnoticed, except by the unfortunate parties involved. Liveaboard diving is essentially remote diving, and there are many considerations that must be planned and prepared for. Operators, trip leaders, dive professionals, and divers all have roles to play if we are to reduce accidents, property losses, and, especially, fatalities.
Fitness to Dive at the Dive Shop: Handling Last-Minute Uncertainty
By Matias Nochetto, MD
In this presentation we’ll discuss how to navigate those challenging last-minute fitness-to-dive questions that arise just before it’s time to board the boat. We’ll cover what you can do, what DAN can do for you, and what none of us can do.
How Feasible Is Personalized Decompression?
By Frauke Tillmans, PhD
In this presentation we’ll explore the intriguing topic of personalized decompression and its connection to bubble formation and individual physiology. With a focus on understanding the complexities of decompression stress and its relationship to DCS risk, we will dive into the challenges faced by dive researchers in studying individual physiology, discuss the limitations of current methods, explore the potential of new technologies, and outline why further research is needed.
Living Well with Dive Computers
By Neal Pollock, PhD
Dive tables offered the standard for controlling dive profiles for the first half of our modern diving history. The shift to relying on dive computers brought convenience, but also challenges. Most important now is that the wide range of available devices makes it difficult to sufficiently orient divers to them. This presentation will review key functions and options, some well-established and some fairly new, to aid in selection and best practices for use.
2025 DAN Instructor, Instructor Trainer, and Examiner Update
By JoAnn Perry MSE
Divers Alert Network Instructors, Instructor Trainers, and Examiners are invited to attend this 2025 Update. This session will cover improvements and changes from the past year and provide an outlook on changes coming in the year ahead.
Everything You Need To Know About DAN
By Shelli Wright and Angela Williams
Join us for an overview of DAN’s membership and insurance programs, and learn about all the great benefits available to you, your business, and your customers. We’ll cover DAN membership benefits, dive accident coverage, trip and travel insurance, and liability coverage, and there will be time to get answers to all your questions. Learn how dive pros and dive operators can use these programs to better serve their customers, mitigate risk, and grow their business.
Sun Exposure: UV Radiation
By Francois Burman, PE, MSc
Dive professionals, boat crews, and others who work in the industry are exposed to the sun for long periods, often daily. Dive clients may be unaware of how long they spend exposed to the sun’s UV radiation. While sunburn offers a reminder to use protection, the longer-term dangers are not all related to burns. Understanding how UV radiation affects us and using appropriate protection are essential to dive operators and professionals.
Hazards of Rebreather Diving
By Neal Pollock, PhD
Rebreathers provide both physiological and range benefits for divers, but these advantages come with the costs of increased complexity and related hazards. This presentation will briefly consider the benefits of rebreather diving and will then focus on the hazards that must be managed by rebreather divers.
Mild DCI, In-Water Recompression, and When to Freak Out: Dos and Don’ts
By Matias Nochetto, MD
Could you recognize a mild case of the bends? Could you distinguish a mild case from a serious one? In this presentation we’ll review red flags and put symptoms and risk factors in context to help you make good decisions.
Environmentally Friendly Dive Operations
By JoAnn Perry MSE
Much has been said about the importance of considering our environmental impact in the water, but have we also been diligent in other areas of our businesses? A look into other aspects of dive operations — out of the water — will generate new ideas about how we can be better stewards of our environment.
DAN Global Initiatives
By Nathalie Judkins, Laura Johnson, and Mel Cefai
From local-language emergency hotlines in Asia and Latin America to free first aid and oxygen training to dive support staff across Indonesia, DAN is doing more than ever to improve diver safety around the world. Join us as we highlight initiatives and projects happening now across the U.S., Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific, including donation of oxygen equipment, scholarships, grants, free student medical expense coverage, continuing medical education for hyperbaric doctors, research, and more.
Drowning from the Inside: The Ins, Outs, and Unknowns of IPE
By Emmanuel Dugrenot, PhD
During diving, cardiopulmonary changes can cause immersion pulmonary edema (IPE/IPO) and increase the risk of drowning. This talk presents an updated review of the mechanisms of IPE (known and suspected) that can lead to extravascular water accumulation in the lungs and “drowning from the inside.”
Presenter Bios
DAN Speakers
Francois Burman, PE, MSc
Francois is the Vice President, Safety Services, at DAN. He is responsible for all DAN’s safety and accident-prevention initiatives as well as the recompression chamber network. He has traveled around the world to conduct safety assessments at facilities used to treat injured divers and has written two books: The Risk Assessment Guide for Dive Operators and Professionalsand The Risk Assessment Guide for Recompression Facilities.
Mel Cefai
Mel is the Regional Director for Asia-Pacific at DAN World. She learned to dive in Dahab, Egypt, and joined the DAN family soon after when an opportunity arose in Australia. She has now worked for DAN for more than 20 years. Mel is passionate about the work DAN does in the diving community and has been privileged over the years to meet many of the members DAN has helped all over the world.
Emmanuel Dugrenot, PhD
Manu is a Senior Researcher at DAN. He has a doctoral degree in hyperbaric physiology and molecular biology, a publication scope that includes both animal and human studies, and additional expertise in decompression modeling. He is a scientific diver, a public safety diver, and a rebreather and technical diving Instructor Trainer.
Laura Johnson
Laura Johnson is the Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at DAN World. Laura began working at DAN in 1999, the same year she became a certified diver in her home state of North Carolina. Her passion for diving in Cozumel, Mexico, and her love for Latin American cultures led her to relocate to Cozumel in 2009, where she has lived ever since. Laura is a PADI dive pro and a DAN Instructor Trainer.
Nathalie E. Judkins
Nathalie is the Director of Membership and Insurance Services at DAN. She is a diver and a licensed insurance agent. Nathalie has over 20 years of experience at DAN, helping divers and travelers navigate the organization’s various insurance products and programs. She works with DAN members, dive professionals, and dive operators globally and is fluent in Spanish and French as well as English.
Matias Nochetto, MD
Matias is the Vice President, Medical Services, at DAN, where he has worked since 2006. He is co-director of the DAN-UHMS continuing medical education program and a faculty member of several national and international diving medicine courses and programs. He became a dive instructor in 1999 during medical school, which led him to complete a three-year clinical and research fellowship in hyperbaric and diving medicine to combine the two passions.
JoAnn Perry, MSE
JoAnn is the Safety Services Program Coordinator at DAN. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering and brings knowledge of safety in the construction and manufacturing industries to scuba diving. JoAnn has been teaching diving since 2008 and is a diving Instructor Trainer and a DAN Examiner.
Frauke Tillmans, PhD
Frauke is the Research Director at DAN. She has a PhD in human biology and oversees DAN’s in-house research initiatives in diving physiology, injury monitoring, and population health, as well as the DAN Research Grant Program. An avid diver, she is DAN’s point of contact for national and global collaborations in diving-related research. Before joining DAN in 2019, she participated in projects covering a variety of medical and health aspects in recreational and military diving.
Angela Williams
Angela is the Manager of Membership and Personal Insurance at DAN. She manages the DAN Member Services team and has 17 years of experience at the organization. She is a licensed insurance agent who is highly motivated to ensure DAN members are educated about the personal insurance programs and products DAN offers.
Rochelle “Shelli” Wright
Shelli is the Director of Commercial Insurance at DAN. She has been a licensed insurance agent for over 25 years, actively working with all lines of insurance products. Shelli is a dive instructor and an avid technical and full cave diver. She combines her knowledge of insurance and her passion for diving to promote risk mitigation and safety education for the diving community.
Guest Speaker
Neal W. Pollock, PhD
Neal holds a Research Chair in Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine and is an Associate Professor in Kinesiology at Université Laval in Québec, Canada. He was previously Research Director at DAN and conducted research at Duke University, both in Durham, North Carolina. His academic training is in zoology, exercise physiology, and environmental physiology. His research interests focus on human health and safety in extreme environments, including decompression safety for both divers and astronauts.
DAN Member Social Returns
Join DAN and your fellow dive industry professionals at the DAN Social at DEMA to enjoy an evening of conversation, drinks, and fun. As your dive safety organization, we raise a glass to all who work tirelessly to promote dive safety. We hope you can join us.
DATE & TIME
Tuesday, November 19
6–9pm
LOCATION
Ballrooms A and B
Westgate Las Vegas, 3000 Paradise Rd, Las Vegas, NV
Show Notes
Schedule A Meeting
Learn about DAN’s programs by setting up a one-on-one appointment. Contact DAN World Member Services at to reserve your time today.