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ALUMNAE IPROFILESCarl DouglasClass of 1984Taking a DiveJonas Dahm/Deep Sea ProductionsCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE SPRING 2008BYNANCYSHOHETWEST’84T H I S I S S U E• Carl DouglasClass of 1984• Susan BastressClass of 1970• Mary Ann “Maisy” Wambaugh BennettClass of 1944• Ingrid Walker-DescartesClass of 19918After seeing what Carl Douglas ’84 has accomplished at thehelm of Deep Sea Productions, his Swedish documentary andpublishing company, one can only wonder what he might achievewere he not afraid of water.Today he calls it a funny story, but being thrown into the waterat age five spooked him well into adulthood. “After that, I was alwaysdeathly afraid of water and am still a terrible swimmer,” Douglasadmitted. But in 1990 he spent three months in Australia, where somefriends persuaded him to try deep-sea diving. He was hooked.Over the next five years, Douglas learned to make his wayamong coral reefs and shipwrecks, becoming increasingly fascinatedby the things he saw under the waters near his homeland of Sweden.“In 1996, I got into technical diving in order to better reach theinteresting wrecks that we have in the Baltic Sea. Technical diving,” heexplained, “is basically diving in caves and using gas mixes other thanair—notably using helium to enable deeper dives than whilst usingregular air.”For years, Douglas had been interested in photography; hestudied it at Concord Academy, though remembered being “intenselyannoyed at the seemingly silly assignments we were sent on—but ofcourse there was a point.” He also studied film for the first time atCA, with no clue that he’d one day be taking his cameras underwater.“I think the whole media experience at CA for me was an odd mix oflearning discipline and at the same time encouraging me to find myown point of view,” he said.After college, Douglas returned to Sweden for ten years ofmilitary service. He was stationed in northern Bosnia with the UnitedNations Protection Force during both the massacre of Srebrenicaand the eventual ceasefire accords of Dayton. He then went on tofound a firm dedicated to intelligence and knowledge managementconsulting. But the lure of diving was irresistible. While runningthe consulting company, he began melding his interests in the seawith photography, starting Deep Sea Productions in 1997. He left hisconsulting company in 2003 to focus on his new venture, whichinitially was devoted exclusively to underwater diving and filming, buthas since branched out into non-oceanic films and books. To date,Deep Sea Productions has discovered well over one hundred wrecksin the Baltic Sea.