Dewey Smith

Dewey Dewayne Smith (July 24, 1972 – May 5, 2009) was an underwater diver, former United States Navy medic and professional aquanaut. He died during a dive from the Aquarius underwater habitat off Key Largo in May 2009. A subsequent investigation determined that multiple factors combined to cause the accident.

Life and career The NEEMO 13 Crew: Left to right: JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, Smith, NASA astronauts Nicholas Patrick and Richard R. Arnold, habitat technician Jim Buckley, NASA engineer Christopher E. Gerty. Smith was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, but grew up and lived for most of his life in Panama City, Florida. He served in the United States Navy as a Hospital Corpsman aboard the USS Peleliu in San Diego, California, and was honorably discharged after five years of service. He learned to scuba dive while working with Florida State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation program. Smith graduated from FSU with a B.S. degree in underwater crime scene investigation in 2005. He subsequently worked as a commercial diver with Miracle Strip Welding & Marine Services and RME-Diver in Panama City Beach, Florida.

Smith joined Aquarius, which is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the University of North Carolina Wilmington, in 2007. He worked as a habitat technician and undersea research diver. As part of his work with Aquarius, Smith answered questions from schoolchildren.

In August 2007, Smith took part as a habitat technician in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 13 (NEEMO 13) mission, one of a series of NASA-NOAA missions which use Aquarius as an analog environment for space exploration. The NEEMO 13 crew lived and worked underwater aboard Aquarius for ten days.

Death

In May 2009, Smith was aboard Aquarius to train U.S. Navy divers in saturation diving and prepare for upcoming scientific studies in the Conch Reef area. On May 15, 2009, at a panel at International Space Medicine Summit III devoted to human performance in analog environments, astronaut-aquanaut Dafydd Williams, who had participated in two NEEMO missions, asked for a moment of silence in Smith's memory. Aquarius donated a Superlite 17 diving helmet, the helmet most frequently worn by Aquarius aquanauts, to the History of Diving Museum in Islamorada, Florida in memory of Smith.