2023 ERDI Ambassadors

Shawn Haynes

Shawn Haynes is based in the mountains of western North Carolina where he is heavily involved with the fire service and search & rescue. He teaches various fields of rescue from basic ropes, mountain, and wilderness rescue to swift water and public safety diving. As an ERDI instructor, Shawn works with the Henderson County Rescue Squad dive team and assists other teams throughout his state and region with training and advice.
Shawn began his journey in public safety diving in the mid 90’s, diving as a volunteer with a local rescue squad. He then moved to a full-time job with a fire department where he was fortunate to spend a significant time on the rescue company. Through his involvement as a technical rescue instructor, Shawn has assisted in the development of several technical rescue programs.
In his spare time, Shawn enjoys teaching recreational divers and traveling to dive locations with his wife, Rachel, and their various dive buddies.

Timothy Andro

Tim Andro is the owner and lead SDI/ERDI instructor for Northeast Public Safety Divers, a premiere public safety dive training center for the northeast U.S. He has almost 20 years of recreational and technical dive experience, including Advanced Trimix and Closed-Circuit Rebreather with depths over 200’, and has logged over 3,500 dives (including over 800 deco dives). He has also been a firefighter for 22 years, 12 of those as a public safety diver, and is the current Dive Coordinator for Mahwah Fire & Rescue Co #1 since 2015, and the current President of the North Jersey Regional SCUBA Task Force since 2019. Tim has run operation for the FBI, US Coast Guard, NY and NJ Port Authority Police, The Royal Mounted Canadian Police in Alberta, and numerous other smaller jurisdictions throughout NY & NJ.

Pato Galaz

Pato Galaz, Chilean, founder of the public safety diving training center BUCEO RESCATE, has worked for almost 14 years in the uniformed police Carabineros de Chile, belonging to the GOPE Special Police Operations Group, participating in different rescue operations recovering bodies and/or evidence in the aquatic environment. He has participated as an instructor in the training of Carabineros police divers and criminal divers of the Investigative Police of his country. Pato Galaz, is passionate about the public safety diving area, becoming the first ERDI instructor in Chile, thanks to this he has trained PSD divers in various institutions that are called to respond to an emergency. He is an expert in forensic diving accredited by the Courts of Appeals of his country, a commercial professional diver and an underwater robotics instructor oriented to the PSD.