Mike Young grew up in the mountains of Colorado. At a young age, he became an extreme skier, avid hunter, mountaineer, and extreme motorcyclist. For Mike, no adventure was too big! Mike’s sense of adventure probably started with the Alligator farm that his parents own, as only he and his brother, Jay, were available to play with the saurian beasts.
Mike first learned to scuba dive in the early 1990’s and made his first open water dive’s in a sinkhole on the edge of the Kalahari desert, in Africa. This combined with his adventure for extreme sports and wrangling Alligators, made it natural for him to gravitate towards technical diving. He was soon involved in deep cave diving and his interest for sump diving grew.
Mike’s desire for diving and exploring areas previously unseen by human eyes, has led him to build and customize many of his own products. As a creative person and inventor this wasn’t a problem for him, but it was certainly necessary as many of the required components were not available for purchase at the time.
Mike has been influential in designing products for many companies, including HOLLIS Gear. Other dive related innovations include the GEM semi closed rebreather technology, which was marketed through KISS Rebreathers.
In October 2012 Mike became the third owner of KISS Rebreathers. With his extensive back ground in machining, product development, and testing, it was a natural move for him to make. Mike has since developed the KISS Orca Spirit, KISS Spirit LTE, GEM Sidekick SCR, GS CCR.