In addition to my real job as CEO for Area9 Lyceum and my education as a physician, I am a passionate scuba diver, dive instructor, GUE diver and underwater photographer. My entire family dives – Christina (my wife) is also a dive instructor, technical/rebreather diver and GUE diver. Caroline (22) is a marine bio graduate from Northeastern University and Elisabeth (18) started going with us on the dive boats before she was allowed to dive, but started at age 10. Today both girls are dive masters with several hundred dives - and Elisabeth still holds the the unofficial world record for sleeping on dive boats.

I am a profound believer in learning from solving problems or doing projects. When we kicked off the development of our fourth-generation adaptive platform, Area9 Rhapsode™, in the early 2018, I wanted to find a project that I could use as my test lab for our technologies – and that I was passionate about so I would spend some of my spare time on it.

At the time, we had been diving in the Caribbean, Florida and Bermuda for some years. Like many other divers, I was stunned by the beauty and diversity of parrotfish. So it was obvious to start with developing an adaptive learning module to learn parrotfish recognition. During the last five years, both my wife and two daughters have joined the efforts to make what is maybe the most advanced fish recognition learning program globally. It has become a great collaboration that is now the target of most of our dive trips, and we have now extended the scope to include both Indopacific and the pacific coast of latin and northern South America.

In 2021, we bought two amazing properties in Bonaire - Barcadera 1 and Barcadera 2. Barcadera 1 already had one of the most spectacular houses on the island. Overlooking Oil Slick Leap (Dive site #20) and with its unique outdoor luxury living, we fell in love with it immediately. When we decided to buy Barcadera 2, it became clear that it would offer the optimal background for establishing a research center with a boutique, high-end dive operation that can serve as a growth house for diving education research and exploration.

I dive on a rEvo III rebreather with Shearwater Petrel and NERD computers and Shearwater SWIFT transmitters on both CCR tanks and bailouts. I always carry a Shearwater Perdix 2 both as additional backup, but primarily because I often combine diving on my rebreather for fun or my fish id project with teaching friends, colleagues or family diving on open circuit. The Perdix 2 comes in handy as additional safety as I can keep it as a rough indicated of total tissue load. My favorite camera used to be a Canon 5DSr in Nauticam housing with Ikelite DS-161 flashes and a remote controlled focus light, but changed in July 2022 to the Canon R5 with Ikelite DS-230 flashes which is admittedly a game changer.

My medical degree is from University of Copenhagen (2002), and I sit on a number of advisory boards and boards in Europe and the US incl. the board of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

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