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John Wagner
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Born in 1957 in San Diego, CA
Designed, invented, and patented the dual directional water channeling system dive fin, known as the APS Mantaray Dive Fins, and the Universal dive fin strap.
I have always been fascinated with the ocean both on the surface and below, and with the people around the world who make underwater exploration possible. I am also an avid aquatic sports person. I started free diving and bodysurfing in the early 1970s. Throughout my years of bodysurfing, I have bodysurfed the Wedge in Newport Beach, California, Pipeline in Hawaii, Puerto Escondido – also known as the Mexican Pipeline, and Boomer in La Jolla, California. I free dove along the La Jolla and Point Loma coastline, Florida, Hawaii, and Northern California. |
I did my first tank dive with some friends in the 1970s with no formal training, I quickly realized that diving can be very fun and exhilarating but is not a sport to be taken lightly. With the proper training, diving can be very enjoyable.
While, looking for a way to enhance my swimming, I started working on a new fin design. The goal I had in mind was to design a fin that would give me more power, greater agility, and comfort and allow me to spend hours in the water without getting fatigued. |
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I started to research and study earlier fin testing and research done by Glen Egstrom, professor of Kinesiology at UCLA, Donna Nawrocki who used the largest number of test subjects in 1979, Mekjavic who also did testing in 1986, and later research done by David Pendergast, Marcy Teesco, Donna Nawrocki and Nadine Fisher of the Center for Research in Special Environments, Department of Physiology, School of Medicine and Biomedial Sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo and partially funded by the United States Navy, Office of Navel Research. |
Gathering information from these earlier fin studies on blade surface area, flexibility, vented versus non-vented fin designs, etc., I started to create my first prototypes and began testing them in the early 1990s. I filed my first patent in 1993. I then passed the fins around to different divers of varying backgrounds, ages, and gender, as well as to swimmers. This ranged from Navy Seals, Lifeguards, Coast Guard Rescue swimmers, as well as beginners, avid divers and instructors.
Since then, the fin has gone through an evolutionary process of perfecting the design by making it lighter, faster, more responsive, and with minimal effort. The challenge was to put all this into a lightweight compact fin design. Since then the dual-directional water channeling system has proven to stabilize the fin blade making a shorter fin more efficient by properly channeling the water over the blade surface and focusing the thrust. |
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| The patented dual-directional water channeling system has received numerous awards such as the Testers’ Choice Award from Scuba Diving Magazine, write-ups in Popular Science Magazine, Asian Diver Magazine, Dive Trainer Magazine, Sports Diver Magazine, and Dive Newswire, etc. It was chosen to be exhibited at the Inventors’ Expo sponsored by the U.S. Patent Office at Disney World’s Epcot Center on two separate occasions. Also, it has received numerous testimonial letters from divers of all types and varying backgrounds. |
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