Christopher Kovacs

Growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Chris was immediately drawn to the sea during his many summers spent on the New Jersey shore. He is a NAUI certified scuba instructor as well as a trained technical diver. He has traveled extensively and has been diving throughout the world, including much of the Caribbean and Mexico, the California kelp forests, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and Iceland. After two land-based diving expeditions to East Greenland, he immediately was drawn to polar diving and looks forward to sharing this underwater world with others. Since first learning to dive, he has had a fondness for cold-water diving and, when not in the classroom, he tries to spend as much time as possible diving the historical shipwrecks of the Great Lakes region in the USA.

In addition to his interest in the underwater world, he has always been fascinated by human movement and physiology. After completing his Ph.D. in Kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2001 he entered the world of higher education and is currently a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Western Illinois University where, along with his research and teaching responsibilities, he currently oversees the university's scuba diving program. He conducts diving research primarily focused on issues related to dive safety and he has been published in numerous academic journals and presented his work at national and international conferences. In addition to his academic interests, he has had a lifelong fascination with history and exploration, has a passion for teaching, and is very excited to share his knowledge and interests with all our guests.