Board Member
Mr. McNeal is the owner/manager of The Dive Shop in Richmond, VA. His shop, a PADI 5-Star Instructor Development Center, is the oldest in Richmond. Mr. McNeal has been a certified scuba instructor for more than 30 years. He started his teaching career with the YMCA in 1973, eventually becoming a master scuba instructor with that agency. In 1982, he crossed-over to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) and opened The Dive Shop that same year. He has certified over 5,000 scuba divers, and has been the primary scuba instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University since 1984, two years after opening The Dive Shop.
He was a certified Fisheries Scientist with the American Fisheries Society between 1973-1984. His academic background includes the B.S. degree in biology from Tulane University, and the M.S. degree in biology from Virginia Commonwealth University. Mr. McNeal has enjoyed scuba diving as a recreational diver for about forty years.
He not only teaches what he loves to do, but he has also led dive travel groups to all of the Bahamas, Grand Cayman Island, Bonaire, Rotan (Honduras), Belize, Cozumel, Fiji, Hawaii, North Carolina wreck dives, Florida (Panhandle, Springs, Palm Beach and the Keys), and the Louisiana oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. McNeal has supported Lake Rawlings since its inception, having introduced most of his open water students to our lake since 1994. He is also a member and contributor of Divers Alert Network (DAN), Duke University Medical Center, Raleigh, NC.