KISS Ambassador's
Adrián González
Adrián González is a retired Spanish police officer (GREIM) and caver who started diving in 2006 with the goal of diving in caves. Cave diving has become his hobby and passion, and he now enjoys diving and collaborating with great Spanish and English cave divers. He became an instructor in 2015.
For some time, he looked for a rebreather that would best suit his type of diving. After investigating, he had no doubt that he would choose a KISS rebreather. Adrián had the opportunity to do his KISS training with Mike Young and Víctor Cordoba, during which he dived the KISS sidemount rebreather’s, KISS Sidekick and KISS Spirit Sidewinder, choosing on the latter model.
"I have discovered during these past years that KISS is not just a diving company, it is really a great family. Mike leads a team of professionals that together with KISS instructors and other KISS divers are willing to help, advise and resolve any questions.
For this reason it is a great honor for me to be a small part of this family like a KISS AMBASSADOR"
Sandra Clopp
Sandra Clopp runs Urban Manta, a technical and recreational scuba training facility based in NYC. She’s been divemastering all over the world since 2004 and teaching since 2006. She is a TDI Helitrox instructor who teaches over 20 specialties and is Tec 100 cave ccr trained.
She’s done over 1,400 dives in all kinds of environments all over the world, which include underwater photography dives in the tropics, local Northeast shipwreck exploration (including the Andrea Doria), rebreather trimix technical diving to 321′, cave diving to 277′ in Fl and thousands of feet back in Mexico, cave diving in Australia and the Philippines, and runs ice diving classes beneath a frozen winterland.
Sandra dives on the KISS Classic, the KISS Sidewinder, the KISS Sheppard during tight cave explorations, sidemount or backmounted doubles. As a technical instructor she focuses on proper trim and buoyancy control; even with Open Water students during their very first pool session.
Sandra is a KISS Rebreathers Ambassador. One of her favorite things about the close knit company is being able to photograph and participate in the testing of new rebreathers; the brain children of owner Mike Young. She dove the new sidemount-one-mount rebreather the Sheppard surveying an unexplored cenote in Cozumel with the KISS Rebreathers exploration team, with plans to return for more survey.
Gayle Orner
KISS Ambassador, Gayle Orner spent many years diving in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to frequently seeking out critters along the California, Washington, and Oregon coasts, she volunteered as a diver at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and as a scientific diver for Oregon State University. When a job opportunity forced relocation to Madison, Wisconsin in 2012, Gayle assumed that dive options would be limited. Instead, she found an active and welcoming dive community, spectacular Great Lakes Shipwrecks, and lots of local lakes to explore. She soon took possession in of the local Four Lakes Scuba Club “traveling trophy” given annually to the most active club diver, and turned it into a "non-traveling trophy". Gayle started cave diving primarily for the opportunity to keep diving locally year-round, but soon found that diving in the flooded mines of Wisconsin was her favorite winter activity. She purchased her KISS Sidekick, "The Beast" in 2014, so that she wouldn’t have to keep getting out of the water to change tanks in the sub-zero Wisconsin temperatures. The lack of bubbles, extended bottom time, and warmer air were bonuses!
Gayle and "The Beast” became an inseparable team and can often be found cleaning up trash at community cleanup dives, volunteering on shipwreck surveys for the Wisconsin Historical Society, stalking anchors in the local lakes, dressing up and diving in seasonal costumes, hanging out with fish, showing off their KISS KARGO swag, and of course, cave diving. All of these activities are well documented on social media thanks to the efforts of Gayle’s very talented photographer dive buddies, especially Andrew Bachhuber, the Official Photographer of “The Beast”. Recently, Gayle and "The Beast” welcomed a new baby Sidewinder, "The Brat" into the dive family. Gayle and her dive buddies are looking forward to many more KISS rebreather dive adventures with “The Beast” and “The Brat”.
Josh Hotaling
I started scuba diving in 2012 while stationed at Balboa Medical Center, San Diego, California. When I returned from Afghanistan with injuries from the war I was looking for a new sport/hobby that I could still do at a high performance level, and scuba was the answer I was looking for.
The non-profit SUDS was running Open Water courses at the hospital as part of rehabilitation therapy and I fell in love with diving immediately. The water is a perfect equalizer for someone with a crippling injury because of the resemblance of zero gravity.
When I first started in diving I was taking as many recreational courses that were being offered at the LDS and looking for an instructor willing to teach someone without legs to dive closed circuit. In 2013 I befriended Tony Cerezo on a SUDS trip and after that started taking 4-6 week long trips too Puerto Rico/ Dominican Republic to learn to dive various eccr back mount units. In 2014 I did my cave courses up too technical cave diver in open circuit side mount. With how slow I swim not using a scooter my cave penetrations were being severely limited diving open circuit so I started looking to see what was out there for side mount rebreathers because my back mount unit would not make it through some of the restrictions in the caves I was diving in Dominican Republic.
At DEMA 2014 I stopped by the KISS booth to take a look at the KISS Sidekick to check the unit out and see if it was the answer I was looking for to have more time inside the caves. After meeting with Mike Young and talking with him I soon found out that the Sidekick would not be a viable option due to the way I dive. Mike really took a liking to me (don’t know why but extremely grateful he did) and a great friendship was born, Mike explained to me that without my legs to counter the roll when counterlungs are inflated it would be difficult for me to dive, but he was going to design/modify a sidemount unit to fit my diving, and the KISS Sidewinder was born.
I couldn’t ask for a better sidemount rebreather, it works perfectly for my diving style inside or outside of a cave. From there the rest is history, the past few years of being able to dive and learn with Mike on the Sidewinder has been amazing. When I’m not out having fun diving my Sidewinder you can find me teaching veterans to scuba dive with the non-profit “RR Scuba”( Ranger Road). We will teach any veteran who wants to dive but I enjoy working with our disabled vets especially amputees because I feel I can help them become good divers with perfect trim/buoyancy quicker than others because of being in same physical position as them.
"To me, being a KISS Ambassador is a big honor because KISS is putting trust in you by putting you next to their name/brand. I hope I can extend that trust by promoting KISS rebreathers in the best way possible, and showing other divers out there the quality of their products. Tough expedition grade rebreathers where you will be in the water diving every time, instead of on shore troubleshooting your unit, like others I have dived."
