Curt Bowen started his diving career at a young age when he moved from his land-locked home state of Iowa to the sunny white beaches of Sarasota, Florida. As with the case of many divers, he was drawn to the underwater environment by watching the Cousteau specials as a child.
Following years of diving and continued education to higher certifications, Curt become heavily involved in deep cave and wreck exploration in the late 80’s. For many years Curt performed in the role of technical instructor, teaching extended range, decompression, and trimix.
In 1995 Curt founded a new technical diving publication, Deeptech Journal, and for five years traveled, explored and published many outstanding magazine issues. Business partner problems caused the closure of Deeptech Journal, while at the same time spawning the birth of Advanced Diver Magazine, now under the sole ownership of Curt Bowen.
With the increased editorial and image demands of owning a dive publication, Curt expanded his dive skills to include underwater photography after the opening of Deeptech Journal. These demands have only increased with the success of Advanced Diver Magazine.
Since closed-circuit rebreathers are excellent tools for gaining extended bottom times, reducing bubble percolation in the cave or wreck environment, reducing decompression requirements, and enabling closer encounters with marine species, using rebreathers for his photography was only a natural evolutionary step for Curt.
As a serious cave and wreck explorer Curt had traveled from North to South America exploring and photographing many new dive locations. During these expeditions, he had become accustomed to extreme streamlining of his diving equipment. The main motivation for choosing the KISS Classic CCR was the absence of chest mounted counter lungs, providing the cleanest and most streamlined CCR system available. No counter lungs on the chest also freed up the standard D-ring locations normally used to attach the extra cameras, strobes, and HID / LED lights needed for photography.
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