Joseph B. MacInnis

Joseph Beverly MacInnis (born 2 March 1937) is a Canadian physician, author, and diver. In 1974, MacInnis was the first scientist to dive in the near-freezing waters beneath the North Pole. In 1976 he became a member of the Order of Canada.

MacInnis currently studies leadership in high risk environments and gives leadership presentations in North America and Europe. His audiences have included Microsoft, IBM, National Geographic, Rolex, Visa, Toyota and the U.S. Naval Academy.

MacInnis led ten research expeditions under the Arctic Ocean. He was among the first people to dive to the wreck of the RMS Titanic. In 2012 he was a medical advisor and journalist on the James Cameron-National Geographic seven-mile science dive into the Mariana Trench.

MacInnis has worked with the U.S. Navy, the Canadian Forces and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has written ten books. His latest, Deep Leadership: Essential Insights from High Risk Environments, was published by Random House.

Education and early career MacInnis is of Isle of Mull Scottish descent. MacInnis was raised by his mother, who remarried when he was 12. He attended the University of Toronto, where he was the captain of the swim team in the mid-1950s. While at the university, he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. MacInnis held the Canadian record for the breaststroke and tried unsuccessfully to make the Canadian Olympic team in 1956. He spent his internship at the Toronto General Hospital,

Man-In-Sea and Ocean Systems After his junior internship, MacInnis hoped to work with inventor and entrepreneur Edwin Link in the field of deep diving, but had no idea how to reach him. In fall 1963 MacInnis placed a person-to-person telephone call to Link, who agreed to meet with him for fifteen minutes the next day at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. At the interview, Link offered MacInnis a position as the full-time doctor for his Man-In-Sea Project. In 1964, MacInnis became medical director of Man-In-Sea. The dive was successful, although MacInnis made a potentially grave error by placing a cover without a pressure-equalizing valve on a carbon dioxide-filtering device.

In September 1967 MacInnis took part in a classified Ocean Systems mission aboard Deep Diver on the Grand Banks south of Newfoundland. A cable plow, rumored to be used for burying a strategic communications cable, had been lost in 400 feet of water. Two Navy divers had already been killed trying to recover it. MacInnis was one of a crew of four Ocean Systems personnel who unsuccessfully attempted to recover the cable plow using the submersible. The mission was called off due to rising winds, and Deep Diver was barely brought safely back aboard the Canadian Coast Guard vessel CCGS John Cabot. and in the search for the lost submarine USS Scorpion. In late 1968 and early 1969, MacInnis took part in salvage operations after the crash of Pan Am Flight 217 near Caracas, Venezuela. which was placed in Georgian Bay near Tobermory, Ontario, in June 1969. Sublimnos had an "open hatch" policy, allowing access to any diver with a legitimate reason to use the habitat. In July 1969 MacInnis attended the Apollo 11 launch at Cape Kennedy, then traveled to Tobermory, where he dived to Sublimnos and looked up through the water at the Moon at the very moment the astronauts were walking on it. In 1970 Trudeau asked MacInnis to help write Canada's first national ocean policy. MacInnis began a series of ten research expeditions to study techniques for working under the Arctic Ocean. In March 1971 MacInnis was a member of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation crew filming Harp seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Author and conservationist Farley Mowat was another member of the expedition. Mowat also helped encourage MacInnis to write.

In 1972, MacInnis led the team that constructed Sub-Igloo, the first manned underwater station in the Arctic Ocean. MacInnis took part in a telephone call from Sub-Igloo to Prime Minister Trudeau in Ottawa, Ontario. MacInnis visited the Soviet Union for the first time in autumn 1973 as part of a scientific exchange program, and showed a short film about his underwater polar research in Moscow and Leningrad. In 1974, MacInnis was the first scientist to dive beneath the North Pole.

MacInnis was awarded the Order of Canada on 14 January 1976 and was invested on 7 April 1976.

In 1981, supported by the Canadian Coast Guard, the National Geographic Society, and others, the group returned. A remotely piloted submersible was used to examine the wreck, which took the first colour photographs and video footage. The images showed the bow, masts, rudder and anchor. The wood appeared new.

Titanic and Edmund Fitzgerald expeditions In 1985, MacInnis was an adviser to the team that discovered the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) paid $10,000 for three of its members to each join a dive and take still pictures. MacInnis concluded that the notes and video obtained during the dives did not provide an explanation of why the Fitzgerald sank. MacInnis helped organize another series of dives in July 1995 to salvage the bell from the Fitzgerald. Canadian engineer Phil Nuytten's atmospheric diving suit, the Newtsuit, was used to retrieve the bell from the ship, replace it with a replica, and put a beer can in the Fitzgeralds pilothouse. At MacInnis' suggestion, the replica bell was inscribed with the names of the Fitzgeralds crew.

In 2003, MacInnis accompanied filmmaker James Cameron on the Disney-IMAX expedition to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans which resulted in the 3-D film, Aliens of the Deep.

As part of his ongoing research into leadership in life-threatening environments, in 2010 MacInnis spent time with members of the Canadian Armed Forces in order to research military leadership. This included a visit to Canadian forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In 2008, he received the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from Lakehead University. MacInnis is a Member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

MacInnis is the president of Undersea Research Ltd., a consulting company which he founded in Toronto in 1968. He has written for such publications as National Geographic, Wired and Scientific American. He makes frequent motivational speeches to Fortune 500 companies. As of 1965, MacInnis lived near the Town of Port Credit, in what is now Mississauga.

Publications MacInnis, Joseph B. (1966). "The Medical and Human Performance Problems of Living Under the Sea". Canadian Medical Association Journal. MacInnis, Joseph (1971). Underwater Images. McClelland and Stewart Limited. . MacInnis, Joseph B. (1973). The James Allister MacInnis Foundation Arctic Diving Expeditions. MacInnis, Joe (Foreword by Pierre Elliot Trudeau) (1975). Underwater Man. Dodd, Mead & Company. . MacInnis, Joe (Introduction by Walter Cronkite) (1982). The Breadalbane Adventure. Optimum Publishing International. . MacInnis, Joe (1985). The Land That Devours Ships: The Search for the Breadalbane. (Revised edition of The Breadalbane Adventure.) CBC Enterprises. . MacInnis, Joseph (1992). Titanic In a New Light. Thomasson-Grant. . MacInnis, Joseph (general editor) (1992). Saving the Oceans. Key Porter Books. . MacInnis, Joseph (1997). Fitzgerald's Storm: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Macmillan Canada. . MacInnis, Joseph (2002). Surviving Terrorism: How to Protect Your Health, Wealth and Safety. Deep Anchor Press. . MacInnis, Joe (2004). Breathing Underwater: The Quest to Live in the Sea. Penguin Canada. . MacInnis, Joseph (Introduction by James Cameron) (2004). James Cameron's Aliens of the Deep. National Geographic Society. . MacInnis, Joe (2012). Deep Leadership: Essential Insights from High-Risk Environments. Alfred A. Knopf Canada. .