The diving world was stunned in May by the death in the Red Sea of a diving legend - cave diver, technical diver and conservationist Rob Palmer.
His wife Steffi Schwabe, Martyn Farr, Gavin Newman and John Bantin recall the qualities that made him the consummate diver.

One of the most important things I would like to convey to Diver readers is that Rob died not because he was diving, but because it was his time. It seems to have happened suddenly after entering the water. He may have had a heart attack or suffered an aneurysm in the brain.
Nothing could have been done, and there was nothing he could have done for himself. We had both come through recent medicals without a hitch. He would not have gone diving had he felt bad. The only thing Rob did wrong was to leave us so soon. I had planned in my old age to make the same jump as him, but together. Most of you who knew Rob knew he had lousy timing. He is now where he wanted to be - left on one of the most beautiful reefs in the world. He had asked me to arrange such a thing, should an untimely demise have occurred on land. There will be no body, and that is how Rob wanted it.
Rob and I had a dream, which was to move to the Bahamas and set up an organisation to provide safe training practices for cave and other diving. We also wanted to continue exploration and scientific work in the cave environments there, and to share their immense beauty and importance with whoever was interested. Most important for the future of the Bahamas, however, was the protection of the caves.
We arranged Blue Holes trips with the Miami-based boat Ocean Explorer, owned and operated by our friend, Duffer Malone. We persuaded scientists of various disciplines that these unique environments deserved their attention. Alone we could only scratch the surface.
Rob is no longer with us, but our project is still alive, and what we started together will continue. Had I failed to return from a dive, Rob would have done the same. So with Duffer and friends we will continue to run these trips, and I hope that anyone who wishes to join us will do so.
I need everyone's help to keep Rob's spirit alive, not only through Rob Palmer's Blue Holes Foundation but through good-quality teaching of diving practices. Rob worked very hard to ensure that everyone had the opportunity to receive the latest and safest instruction available. We must make sure that this continues.
To all our friends who have been so supportive: many of you said that words seemed hardly enough, but you have no idea how helpful they have been in my intensely lonely times. Heartfelt thanks.

Rob Palmer had settled in the Bahamas by 1995 - here he is diving with reef sharks.

It is with profound sadness and regret that I sit here at my PC, surrounded by books, maps, pictures and memories. It is difficult trying to organise my thoughts, as though my mind cannot accept what has happened.
And yet it must. Rob's books sit to my right and inside the cover of Technical Diving the flowing, hand-written dedication brings it all back: "To remind you of cold and muddy days down Southern Stream!"
When we met, Rob Palmer lived in the North, I in the South. We were the same age, enjoyed the same interests and had both pursued careers in education. We shared a burning passion for discovery and adventure. Cave exploration offered us boundless potential, and this he was quick to grasp.
Rob had a zest for life, a deep love of music, mountains and wilderness, and the ability to communicate his enthusiasms. With all the flair of a showman he expanded his portfolio of skills, building bridges and establishing a network of lifelong connections.
He started cave diving in 1976. The combination of the physical and the mental, the wilderness aspect and the cold, unforgiving nature of the enterprise presented the ultimate challenge. Cave diving was to become the crowning skill in Rob's exploratory arsenal. He embarked on this underwater career much as I had done, using second- or third-rate equipment, proceeding by trial and error, learning fast.
Then, as now, there were few cave divers worthy of the name, few people to approach for advice or training, few sources of specialist equipment. This fraternity kept itself to itself, tending to restrict its findings to its own world.
The activity did not have a good track record. At least seven would-be cave divers had come to grief since the first fatality in Wookey Hole, back in 1949.
Love of the wild had already stimulated Rob's interest in more remote corners of the globe. In the summer of 1976 he made a bold cave dive in Orotte de la Cigalere, a site set at the head of an extremely challenging, multiple-pitch cave system in the French Pyrenees.
He moved to South Wales, and complemented his new-found underwater interest with a love of the sea. Rob had a way with words, whether on paper or presented in a crowded lecture theatre. That he was a dreamer and romantic became apparent early on:
"Below a cloud of bubbles, a young diver moved through waving fronds of kelp, tracing the broad leaves of the underwater forest with a gloved hand. Flicking a fin to turn a sponge-encrusted boulder and slide in free-fall into a narrow gully he came face to face with a grey seal cub.
"Across the misty underwater afternoon, two mammals faced each other across a rich and mystical landscape. To one, the alien, the encounter was a touch of forgotten magic that tugged at his soul. To the other, the wary regard of the hunted vied with the curiosity of the inquisitive.
"The cub was the first to break contact, turning in nervous urgency to flick off with broad strokes of her tail. The human, feeling strangely empty, stayed in the kelp gully for some time, watching the grey distance where the seal had disappeared, as though it had taken the magic of the underwater world into a new and different sea beyond the mist."
Exploration and conservation issues ran together. Rob became a committed member of Friends Of The Earth and the Marine Conservation Society. Between work and sleep he found time to run Brecon Folk Club. He would play the tin whistle and other instruments there - often dressed in a kilt!
To extend any frontier depends on knowing where you are starting from and how to chart one's course into the unknown. Rob assimilated mapping skills early on and combined them with artistic flair.
The survey of Ingleborough Cave, for example, reveals names such as "Radagast's Revenge" and "Bilbo's Battery", inspired by the magical world of Lord of The Rings. And who else would have embellished the map of the extensive underwater complex at Roaring Well in Ireland with local village names, to generate points such as "Ardfinnan's Reward"? Rob's surveys were distinctive and his photography also displayed great talent. By 1980 his sights were set on an expedition to the Blue Holes of the Bahamas, and with his skills and driving ambition he was the obvious choice to lead the venture.
It seemed that everything in his life had led to this moment; the hard and soft skills all came together. Despite tremendous organisational difficulties, the outcome signalled a milestone in cave-diving history.
The 1980s were to witness a series of fascinating, incredible ventures, superbly recounted in Rob's books Blue Holes of the Bahamas and Deep into Blue Holes - epic tales to stir the imagination.
On the initial expeditions, for example, the longest penetration of any undersea cave in the world was achieved, but alongside this Rob must get the credit for the valuable scientific work undertaken and the series of films produced.
Rob strove to turn his dreams into reality. The Bahamian environment exerted a magnetic attraction and by the mid-80s he had set up the Andros Project, an international scientific and exploration expedition that was to run for several years. The aim was to find out as much as possible about this intriguing cave environment, but the co-ordination and organisation required was immense. Rob's leadership skills were by now well-honed, and his ability to acquire the necessary equipment almost legendary.
The sheer depth of some of the Blue Holes gave cause for concern, and it was inevitable that he should be drawn towards the concept of rebreathers. The expedition of 1987 saw the team adopt this technology at a number of sites, and a depth of 96m was attained in Stargate. Rob had seen the future.

BACK in the UK, Rob was embarking on the new era of technical diving. Following Rob Parker's epic push at Wookey Hole in the summer of 1985, Rob took advantage of some spare trimix to reach the deepest point in any British cave sump - 64m at Gavel Pot in Yorkshire - that December.
The latter half of l986 featured the "Lost River Project" at Gough's Cave, Cheddar. Again, it was Rob who co-ordinated and made the major advances, reaching the current limit of exploration in May 1990, 400m into Sump 3, beyond a maximum depth of 58m at the start of the final dive.
Life beyond exploration might not have been easy, but Rob never lost sight of his dreams. His work in technical and diver-training circles - latterly associated with the Atlantis rebreather - books, and other freelance work all served to establish a viable career by the later 80s.
By now he had fallen in love with the Bahamas, and returned there regularly. In the early 1990s he set up the Blue Holes Foundation with his wife Steffi, and moved to Grand Bahama in the summer of 1995, aiming to develop a research station. From the Bahamas Rob could make his pioneering forays into the deep with relative ease. Last year a series of expeditions took place that resulted, for example, in a depth of 119m being reached at Lusca's Breath Blue Hole, now the third deepest site in the Bahamas.
Rob was a self-made man who had carved a long and at times difficult path to success. At 46 he had become one of the most respected voices of technical diving, and a comfortable future seemed assured.
But to him exploration and adventure was an avenue to a higher plane: "There are few more rewarding experiences," he wrote, "than offering all you have to the altar of chance and skill, committing life itself to the walk along the wire, and emerging whole on the other side.
"The world smells more vibrant, the colours bear a richer, truer glow, you are so utterly aware of it all, and of its astonishing worth."
We will miss you, Rob.

Ever the co-ordinator, Rob Palmer goes over a dive with colleagues.

The Rob Palmer I knew wanted to be famous, even to the point of eschewing financial reward. Though he wrote many books and appeared in several commercial advertisements, including one for Rolex watches, it was for little or no payment. In fact he lived like a church mouse. He just wanted to dive and be known for it. As a diver he exemplified meticulous planning and perfect technique - even to the point of being what some might call dispassionate. He was certainly the most competent person with whom I have ever ventured under water.
On those occasions (often more adventurous than ordinary leisure dives) I always felt that he was looking after me rather than vice versa. Rob knew what he was doing.
His schoolteacher background showed through when it came to diver training. He was a superb educationalist and this was reflected in his training methods on behalf of the technical training agency TDI. He was, however, pragmatic rather than dogmatic. He was always ready to consider an alternative approach to any problem and accepted that there were solutions other than his own.
He seemed more interested in underwater geology than in marine life. In the days leading up to his death he told me enthusiastically about the plans he had for his beloved Bahamas Blue Holes Foundation, and for the modest home he intended building on a piece of land on the island of Grand Bahama. One of his favourite sayings was: "Attitude keeps you alive", and yet he was such a completely calm and self-controlled person that he never displayed what is often described these days as "attitude". Above all a nice guy, he was the supreme "technical diver".

Three in the morning, a party at my house, and Rob is sitting amid the remains of a glass coffee table he has just sat on, arms and legs hanging out of the metal frame, beer in hand and a silly grin on his face!
Eighteen metres depth and 1000 metres into a Bahamian Blue Hole, and Rob has stopped in the passage ahead. Swimming up behind him I see him calmly stripping down one of his regulator second stages!
Unfazed by what had obviously been a fairly major malfunction, he retrieved all the springs and clips now liberally spread around the passage and rebuilt the reg.
Quite happy that he had sorted out the problem, he carried on with the dive. We went on to explore several hundred metres of virgin cave passage.
This is how I choose to remember Rob. One of life's nice guys, a walking disaster, yet one of the coolest people underwater you could ever wish to dive with, and a good friend.
The world of serious cave diving is a small one and it is a dangerous game we play. As a consequence we have to accept that from time to time we might lose friends. It is never easy, but especially hard when, as in Rob's case, the loss occurs during what seems to have been a relatively simple open-water dive. Be it emerging from sumps wrapped from head to fin in diveline, or getting porters to carry heavy dive lights to the end of a difficult cave, only to find that all he needed was the bulbs, Rob was a constant source of good story material, and the butt of numerous good-natured jokes!
"Palmerisms" will be a part of British cave-diving folklore for a long time to come. But the guy was an exceptional diver. Whether on air, nitrox, trimix, open circuit or a rebreather, the man was at home under the water.
Diving was a passion which Rob strove to make his life. In recent years he succeeded with his deep involvement in the development of technical diving for sports divers, and the Blue Holes Foundation.
Fortunately for us he was equally at home with a regulator or a pen, and through his books and his ability to pass on his endless enthusiasm to all he met, he became a great ambassador for our sport and a source of inspiration to a new generation of divers.
Appreciations such as this are difficult to write and always remind me of a song from one of my favourite Irish bands, When You're Dead (You're Great). There is a tendency to put people on a pedestal when they are gone. We all have our faults, and Rob was no exception.
Certain people have taken his death as an opportunity to promote their own negative opinions, mostly using the convenient anonymity of the Internet. They have their opinions, but now is not the time.
I consider myself lucky to have known Rob as both a diver and a friend and I think he has left us a great legacy. He was one of those people so rare in the diving world these days, who tried to give back to the sport as much as he took from it.
Thanks, Rob, for everything you gave us: you were the one we thought we'd never lose.

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