Business icon Bob Hollis handed away peacefully on January 4, 2023, in Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah, surrounded by household. His life, full of journey, started on April 25, 1937, in Orland, California when he was born to Robert and Elinor Hollis. An trade big, Bob’s legacy as a pioneer, entrepreneur, businessman, and most significantly, a loving father and grandfather will stay on without end.
Bob achieved extra in 85 years than most and lived his life to the fullest. He was a danger taker who really did what he cherished and impressed others to do the identical. If there wasn’t a means, he created one.
Divers and people within the trade will keep in mind Bob as a groundbreaking affect not solely inside the sport of scuba diving but additionally within the discipline of underwater pictures. Bob’s love affair with the ocean started in 1955 after studying an article about underwater exploration in Standard Mechanics. Following his first scuba expertise, Bob turned one of many earliest underwater photographers on the West Coast and established the Underwater Photographic Society of Northern California in 1966. Moreover, Bob was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Underwater Parks and Reserves (California State Parks Division), the place he helped discover the shoreline and recognized future areas for preservation, together with Level Lobos, La Jolla and the Salt Level State Park.
A real entrepreneur, Bob really met the second and realized that the scuba and underwater pictures tools out there at the moment didn’t meet his wants—so he started growing his personal, all whereas attending faculty for enterprise and engineering and dealing at Normal Oil to help his younger household.
His tenacity paid off and, in 1966, Bob opened the Anchor Shack dive store in Hayward, California, and commenced growing underwater digicam housing, strobes and hand lights, the inspiration of his firm, Oceanic. By 1976, the Oceanic product line had utterly developed, in the end turning each Bob and the Oceanic model into leaders within the scuba group. Throughout his lifetime, Bob based many corporations, together with American Underwater Merchandise, Pelagic Strain Methods, ROMI Enterprises and famend scuba diving manufacturers Oceanic, Hollis, and Aeris.
Utilizing his expertise, Bob helped create an underwater saturation system in 1978 for the Andrea Doria shipwreck. The system was connected to the wreck at a depth of 240 toes for as much as seven days, permitting divers to discover the wreck for a number of days with out having to swim to the floor. Bob logged extra dives than anybody on the wreck and, in 1981, served because the underwater photographer for the nationally aired movie Andrea Doria: The Ultimate Chapter, detailing the crew’s purpose of recovering the financial institution secure from the sunken Italian ocean liner.
Along with growing pictures and scuba diving tools, Bob additionally led a number of the first-ever dive journeys to Cozumel, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Belize, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Galapagos. He additionally led excursions to Papua New Guinea, the place he later constructed a household house and vacation spot dive resort.
Over his storied profession, Bob obtained many awards and achievements, together with the NOGI Award, the DEMA Reaching Out Award, and was an inductee of the Scuba Diving Corridor of Fame.
All through all his skilled success, Bob’s biggest achievement was his household, together with his kids Debbie (Jon), Mike (Molly), Nick (Brittany) and Zach (Danica), grandchildren Heather, Elizabeth, Jonathan, Caitlin, Robert, Seth, Preston, Olivia and Sloane, and great-grandchildren Benjamin, Natalie, Henry, Eleanor, Samuel, Ian and Colin. Bob shared his ardour of the ocean and touring the world with them, together with abalone diving journeys on the California coast, household liveaboard dive journeys, bike adventures, and creating recollections for a lot of lifetimes. He shall be deeply missed by his household and buddies.
The household will maintain non-public providers in Orland, California and asks for these considering honoring Bob to share your story and images through social media. If you want to additionally share these with the household, they are often despatched to [email protected]. In lieu of flowers, please donate to an ocean conservation charity in Bob’s reminiscence.
