International Aquanautic Club

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International Aquanautic Club (IAC)
Logo of the IAC
Founded 1949 (as Barakuda )
president Manfred Balzer
societies approx. 120 diving centers (2010)
Members approx. 2760 diving instructors (2010)
Association headquarters eat
Homepage www.diveiac.de

The International Aquanautic Club , abbreviated IAC (in its own spelling also iac ), until 2012 Barakuda , is an international diving organization based in Essen . Since 1986 it has been one of the leading commercial organizations for recreational diving in Central Europe. The diving organization is a brand of the company , which has been operating under the name International Aquanautic Club GmbH & Co. KG since 2015, for diving and diving instructor training and travel agency .

The diving training organization emerged from the company Barakuda Gesellschaft für Wassersport Ristau & Co. , which was founded in Hamburg in 1949 as a manufacturer of diving equipment . From 1953 Barakuda published the diving magazine Delphin and was instrumental in founding the Association of German Sport Divers (VDST) in 1954 . In the same year the company opened the first German diving school abroad. Barakuda combined the training of divers and diving instructors with the commercial provision of the necessary equipment until the production of diving equipment was discontinued. In 1987 the diving organization was taken over by the current operating family (as of 2016).

history

The Barakuda company

In 1949, Hans-Joachim Bergann and Kurt Ristau, former combat swimmers in the Navy , which was disbanded after the Second World War , founded the Barakuda company in Hamburg . The name was derived from the fish barracuda (arrow pike, lat. Sphyraena barracuda ).

The company manufactured the first swim fins for sportive use and was a monopoly supplier of swim fins in Germany until 1962. In 1950 Bergann and Ristau founded the German Underwater Club Hamburg together with Peter Paulsen. From the end of 1950 the series production of the first diving masks and snorkels started . In 1952 the Delphin , a single-tube pendulum breathing apparatus with compressed air , was developed. In 1954 the first German wireless underwater telephone was developed, but it was forcibly adopted by the later Federal Ministry of Defense and was therefore no longer usable for recreational divers. In the winter of 1959/60 the company moved to Buchholz near Hamburg for reasons of space ; own production and development facilities were set up there. The workforce increased to 350 in the 1960s.

In 1986 Metzeler took over the Barakuda company, stopped producing diving equipment and liquidated the subsidiary. The sons of Barakuda founder Bergann produced, initially under the company Bora Bora Wassersport GmbH , which was newly founded in 1986, and from 1997 - after the repurchase of the trademark rights - as Barakuda Wassersport GmbH, the only diving equipment. Since 2012, Barakuda Wassersport GmbH has been offering a newly founded training program for divers called Barakuda International Diving Schools, which is independent of the IAC .

Diving magazine

At the end of 1953, the Barakuda company published the first German diving magazine (Delphin) under the editorship of Kurt von Eckenbrecher, an Olympic champion in swimming, in its own Barakuda publishing house . The magazine called on the various diving clubs in September 1954 (issue 6) to found a federal association for diving. In 1954 the Association of German Sports Divers (VDST) was founded and the Delphin magazine became an organ of the association. With a circulation of 20,000 copies per year, the magazine was first handed over to Schmidt-Römhild- Verlag and shortly afterwards to Jahr-Verlag (from 2000 years Top Special Verlag ); it has been continued as the magazine diving since 1978 .

Diving training organization

In 1954, the Barakuda company opened the first German diving school abroad, the Barakuda Club Elba in Porto Azzurro, with the help of Hermann Heberlein from Lugano . In the same year the Barakuda Club Corfu was opened, which under the direction of Rolf Weyler developed into the largest German diving base.

At the company headquarters in Buchholz was in collaboration with the 1969 Ministry of Culture of the State of Lower Saxony , the School for Underwater Technology , the first state-approved training center for professional instructors in the Federal Republic of Germany opened. In our own boarding school in Buchholz, future commercial diving instructors were trained for their tasks and certified by the state in one-year courses. Diving equipment mechanics have also been trained. However, this training center later failed due to the high costs of qualified training.

In 1987 the diving organization was taken over by Manfred and Ruth Balzer and renamed the Barakuda International Aquanautic Club . While Ruth Balzer was in charge until 2008, Barakuda International Aquanautic Club became the largest commercial diving organization in Germany. In the course of the years a sub-department of diving tourism with travel offers was developed. After the death of Ruth Balzer in 2008, Manfred Balzer and his children continued to run the company. As of 2015, the children took over completely.

On July 1, 2012, the Barakuda International Aquanautic Club ( Barakuda for short ) became the International Aquanautic Club ( IAC for short ). The renunciation of the brand name Barakuda was u. a. due to an increase in license fees for this brand in 2011. At the end of January 2013, the IAC announced that it had entered into a cooperation with the diving equipment supplier Beuchat International to develop diving equipment and training materials.

Diving training

Diver

The IAC certifies divers according to the specifications of the CMAS and the VDST . However, the IAC offers additional intermediate levels that do not exist with CMAS:

  • IAC Basic Diver (ISO 24801-1)
  • IAC Open Water Diver
  • IAC CMAS * (one-star, ISO 24801-2)
  • IAC Advanced Adventure Diver
  • IAC Advanced Open Water Diver
  • IAC CMAS ** (two-star)
  • IAC Master Diver
  • IAC Dive Leader / CMAS *** (three-star, ISO 24801-3)

Specialty courses

IAC offers the following specialty courses for recreational divers :

Diving instructor

The IAC offers the following certification levels for diving instructors :

  • IAC Basic Instructor (ISO 24802-1)
  • IAC Open Water Instructor / CMAS TL * (diving instructor one-star, ISO 24802-2)
  • IAC Advanced Open Water Instructor
  • IAC Master Instructor / CMAS LT ** (diving instructor two-star)
  • IAC Instructor Tainer / CMAS LT *** (three-star diving instructor)
  • IAC Course Director

International cooperation

The IAC is the second largest member of CMAS Germany and a member of RSTC Europe , the part of the World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC) responsible for Europe . The IAC holds diving instructor and crossover examinations several times a year at home and abroad and trains divers and diving instructors according to internationally recognized standards .

Numbers and trends

In 2012 the IAC counted around 3,000 diving instructors - after 2,760 in February 2010 - and is one of the strongest diving organizations in Germany. In the same year, over 200 diving centers worldwide were connected to the IAC.

For some time now, IAC has also been offering training in technical diving under the name IAC Tec . This area is also recognized worldwide through standardization . IAC is also active in the area of handicapped diving; Since January 2014, the disabled diving association IDDA has taken over this area from the IAC.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c VDST partner Barakuda appears with a new logo. News report at the VDST from July 23, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b VDST training partner. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c In: diving , issue 3/2010, p. 102.
  4. ↑ Holger Schmeißer: Possibilities for the development of the recreational sport diving with special consideration of regional aspects . GRIN Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-638-48753-5 , p. 13 (Master's thesis, University of Leipzig, 2005).
  5. ↑ Company name see their patent from 1954: German Patent DE1688135. September 20, 1954, accessed August 25, 2016 .
  6. ↑ a b Diving on 35 coasts - sailing and windsurfing. The small organizers: Barakuda Club. Die Zeit, April 29, 1977, accessed August 25, 2016 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Thomas Kromp : What's going on with Barakuda? (PDF) (No longer available online.) Coaching Kromp, Essen, August 8, 2012, archived from the original on September 1, 2012 ; accessed on January 30, 2013 .
  8. ^ Barakuda International Diving Schools. (No longer available online.) Barakuda Wassersport GmbH, archived from the original on February 26, 2017 ; accessed on May 1, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Michael Jung: The manual for diving history. Naglschmid Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-925342-35-4 , p. 260.
  10. ↑ The diving magazine "Delphin". Barakuda.org, accessed August 10, 2015.
  11. ^ Fritz Holzmann: German-language magazines. Verlag der Schillerbuchhandlung Hans Banger, Volume 29, 1983, p. 97.
  12. ↑ Ascent - Job - Earning . In: Die Zeit , February 11, 1972, accessed on August 22, 2016.
  13. ↑ Notes on Scuba Diving: Organizations . In: Peter König, Andreas Lipp: Textbook for research divers . 5th edition. University of Hamburg , Institute for Oceanography, Hamburg 2007, p. 3 of the 8th chapter. Retrieved August 22, 2016 (PDF) .
  14. ^ Diving Association Barakuda becomes International Aquanautic Club . Tauch.de, July 18, 2012, accessed on August 22, 2016.
  15. ↑ Beuchat and IAC enter into cooperation. In: diving . Year Top Special Verlag , February 8, 2013, accessed on May 18, 2013 .
  16. ^ IAC catalog 2016 , page 71
  17. ↑ a b c d e f g Certificate. (PDF) No. S EUF CB 2005001. Austrian Standards plus GmbH, July 6, 2015, accessed on May 1, 2017 .
  18. ^ IAC catalog 2016 , page 71
  19. ^ Advanced Adventure Diver , IAC
  20. ^ Advanced Open Water Diver , IAC
  21. ^ CMAS ** , IAC
  22. ↑ Master Diver , IAC
  23. ^ Dive Leader , IAC
  24. ↑ Specialty Courses , IAC
  25. ↑ IAC Catalog 2016 , page 74
  26. ^ Basic Instructor , IAC
  27. ↑ Open Water Instructor (CMAS-TL *) , IAC
  28. ↑ Advanced Open Water Instructor , IAC
  29. ↑ Master Instructor (CMAS -TL **) , IAC
  30. ↑ Instructor Trainer (CMAS - TL ***) , IAC
  31. ↑ Diving Instructor Qualification - Coaching Kromp ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.coaching-kromp.de
  32. ↑ Go diving . diveiac.de, accessed on September 26, 2012.
  33. ↑ IAC & IDDA cooperation. In: diving , issue 3, March 2014, p. 21.