Betty Pratt-Johnson’s “151 Dives” was the dive “Bible” for divers and snorkelers from Olympia, Washington, USA to Seymour Inlet, British Columbia. “I made the decision to write the book I wanted to buy.” In the diving world, Pratt-Johnson was an enigma. Few have met her, and even fewer have dove with her. Betty Pratt-Johnson wrote other comprehensive dive books for the industry (including white water rafting and diving in the San Juan Islands, among other dive locations) before joining the new Pacific Diver magazine, (Diver) magazine, and writing in every issue for 6 1/2 years.
Betty Pratt-Johnson was born on July 16, 1930, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, and attended Purdue University at West Lafayette, Illinois, USA. Betty graduated with a BSC in Home Economics. She learned to dive at Vancouver’s YMCA in 1967 when she was 37 and there was only one dive shop in town. In 1973, NAUI accredited Pratt-johnson as Sport Diver 363. She was ranked #55 on the BC Security Council. In 2002, when Betty was certified for nitrox, she put her foot in the door of technical diving and dove with it for the rest of her diving career. Pratt-Johnson’s number was certified as Nitrox Diver 76578 by Technical Diving International.
She has also dived from the Red Sea to the East China Sea in Okinawa, Greece and Formentera in the Mediterranean; Hawaii, Japan, Indonesia, Fiji and the northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia; Bonaire, Martinique, Jamaica, Mexico, Bermuda, Andros and Eleuthera in the Bahamas; Brazil, Tobago, Colombia, the Galapagos Islands and freshwater lakes in Alberta. Betty dove at the first U.S. underwater reserve at Point Lobos State Reserve and entered efforts to set up three underwater parks in Japan, and diving projects in Greece (where destruction of any artefact is illegal).
Betty ‘s book of 151 dives is the “go to book for all divers,” and starts with the line “Why-Go.” It includes visual explanations of the site, how to get there (GPS) and also includes dive shops who provide recreational instruction, nitrox technical instruction, rebreather, trimix, salt, nitrox, and soda-lime sources. Boat charters, day, multiple days, liveaboards, boats rentals, launch ramps and dive resorts, are also included in this “Bible” of diving.
Betty Pratt-Johnson flew all over the world, under, and beyond. She enjoyed exploring :: scuba diving, hiking, whitewater kayaking, spelunking, sailing, hang gliding and paragliding, and then writing about it.
Pratt-Johnson was no longer able to dive, because of her eyes, at the age of seventy-nine, but was busy writing another book “Small Walks Around Canada”. It started in the summer of 2008. She had gone to Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. She enjoyed writing and the research involved and was a 100 percent stickler for accurate facts and details in the many books to which she put her name.
Betty’s first book went from 1976 to 1992 to a total of 11 printings before being withdrawn from print in early 1994. At this time it was revised and expanded into two volumes; 99 Dives and 101 Dives. 151 Dives was printed in September 2007, and 3,000 books were immediately sold to the Seattle Mountaineers Market.
But alas after a great diving and writing career, with her two sons Brian and Doug at her side, Betty Pratt-Johnson died peacefully at the age of 84 at the Shuswap Lake Hospital in Salmon Arm, British Columbia on October 21, 2014.
Betty Pratt-Johnson may have been a mystery about diving with others, but she was definitely a well-known dive writer who made her home in British Columbia, Canada.
