Title: Walking on Ocean Floors
Author: Mike Mcgettigan
Publisher: XlibrisAU
ISBN: 1796002267
Pages: 304
Genre: Autobiography
Reviewed By: Dan MacIntosh

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Mike Mcgettigan’s book, Walking on Ocean Floors, is described as a book about the life of a commercial diver specifically in the oil and gas industries, and it is most certainly about that. If it was just that, of course, Mcgettigan’s life story would still be fascinating. After all, how many of us can honestly say we’ve come face to face with huge sharks complete with their disproportionally huge white teeth under water? The movie Jaws was fiction; Mcgettigan’s story is taken from real life. However, this book is about a full life, filled with plenty of adventure – both on the job and outside of work.

The reader learns early on how Mcgettigan is also an avid surfer. In fact, many of his diving jobs were probably taken because of the surfing in and around the job region. There’s one point in the book, when he is recalling a particularly difficult diving job, where Mcgettigan’s confesses how much he needs to surf – just to cleanse himself of all the struggles related to that job. For Mcgettigan, surfing is his ‘happy place,’ and that activity is where he finds the most joy and peace. You could have subtitled this book as something like, ‘Riding on the Ocean’s Surfaces,’ as there’s so much content centered around surfing.

Additionally, one could have called this book a travelogue because Mcgettigan surfs and dives in some of the most exotic locales around the world. For instance, Mcgettigan writes extensively about visiting African safaris, with all their beautiful wild beasts. Mcgettigan also enjoys his adult beverages. He writes a lot about visiting the various equally exotic bars he visits, located along his international visitations.

Mcgettigan will strike you as a mostly happy-go-lucky fellow originally from New Zealand. He enjoys challenges and plenty of variety in his life. His story would have held more depth, however, had he invested a little more relational emotion into his book. He tells us about his wife, Christina, for whom he loves to buy foreign gifts. We don’t learn much, though, about why he’s so attracted to Christina and why they’ve remained together for so long. Certainly, it can’t be easy being married to a man with such wanderlust. His marital relationship may not play much into his loves (diving and surfing), but it just feels a little incomplete without more information about his marriage. Similarly, we learn of their two sons, Ryan and Jay, but we find out even less about these two offspring. Do these sons have a tough time with dad always being away? Do they love what he loves, and is he imparting his passions down to them? He writes excitedly about monster waves yet doesn’t touch at all upon the miracle of having children. Granted, family isn’t the thrust of Mcgettigan’s book; however, 304 pages (a healthy book length) with so little about Mcgettigan’s family just strikes one as a little odd, is all.

At book’s end, there are a few pages listing diving abbreviations. From the context, it’s obvious a “bell” is the chamber used to lower divers to the seabed. Nevertheless, this term – and others listed with it – can be learned and used to impress friends at dinner parties.

Most of us will never travel as much as Mcgettigan has, nor live a similarly adventurous life. Reading a book like this one is likely as close to such a life as most of us will ever get. Best of all, Mcgettigan comes off as a humble, nice guy. He’s not writing to brag about his life, but to share what makes it exciting. He’s walked where few others have walked, and the reader is left knowing a lot more about what it feels like to explore the ocean’s depths. Therefore, he’s hands-down the most popular storyteller at dinner parties. Highly recommended to anyone interested in this subject.