Aboard the 120-foot sailboat Nai'a, scuba divers spend days exploring spectacular seamounts and reefs in Fiji and Tonga. At night, they anchor in coves and sip tequila or, in the case of a Minnesotan named Lee Selisky, a Ketel One vodka martini on the rocks with three olives.

In May 2017, Selisky made the long trip to Fiji and the Nai'a with a gang of friends he'd known for years through the Divers Alert Network (DAN), an international safety organization for the diving industry. Selisky had been to the South Pacific before, but something else made this trip special.

Five months earlier, he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurologic disorder affecting nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movements like those needed for walking, talking, chewing, and breathing. The disease has no cure, and most people die within two to five years of diagnosis.

As Selisky perched on the gunwale of a rigid inflatable skiff wearing a tank, regulator, mask, fins, and a vestlike buoyancy compensator, his legs were not functioning well enough to swim underwater, and he didn't have the upper-body strength to haul himself out of the sea after the dive. Knowing that, he still rolled backward off the skiff into the water.

Skill and Integrity

Selisky had been diving for more than 50 years, first plunging to wreck sites in Lake Superior. "Those dives are deep, dark, and cold," says DAN board member Stephen Frink, publisher of Alert Diver magazine. "It only takes one stupid move and you die; there's very little tolerance for mistakes. But Lee was a very skilled diver, and not timid."

Selisky's passion for diving led him to business success manufacturing lead weights for divers with a company he founded called Sea Pearls.

Through his business dealings and leadership in diving organizations, Selisky acquired a reputation for Midwestern decency, industriousness, and integrity. Among DAN board members, many of whom are doctors and lawyers, Selisky was considered astute to the point of genius. "We joked that he had an SHK degree—from the School of Hard Knocks," says attorney and board member Doug Stracener. But nobody was prepared for the hardest knock of all.

Devastating News

During 2016, Selisky became increasingly bothered by muscle weakness. At a board meeting in Durham, NC, he approached fellow DAN member Wayne Massey, MD, FAAN, professor of neurology at Duke University School of Medicine and a former Navy diving researcher, as the group gathered in a home. The two of them and Massey's wife, Janice M. Massey, MD, FAAN, a neuromuscular disease specialist at Duke, withdrew to a bedroom, where the doctors examined Selisky's reflexes and strength.

"He could tell we weren't happy with what was going on," Dr. Massey says. "Janice and I didn't make a diagnosis, but we were highly suspicious." They referred Selisky to colleagues at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, who confirmed the Masseys' hunch.

Selisky revealed his diagnosis to the rest of the board at a retreat in Dallas several weeks later, says Kathy Weydig, cofounder of the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Months later, she and Selisky were having drinks with board member Bill Ziefle at an industry event in New York City when Selisky told them he wanted to dive the Pacific one last time. "Bill and I knew we needed to make this happen," says Weydig.

Underwater with ALS

At the time of the Fiji trip, "Lee's respiratory capacity was still very good," Dr. Massey says. "He also was an experienced diver and had several highly capable diving buddies with him at all times." One of them, Michael Lang, PhD, is co-director of the Center of Excellence in Diving at the University of California, San Diego, where he researches diving physiology and technologies.

"I was his driver diver," Dr. Lang says. He swam above and slightly behind Selisky with one hand guiding his movement and another adjusting his buoyancy compensator to control depth. "He was just thrilled," Weydig recalls. "We spent 10 days diving and saw sea turtles, schooling barracuda, angelfish, and lots of sharks."

Final Dives

Selisky thought he had fulfilled his wish for one last diving adventure. Then came St. Lucia, in the Caribbean, where the DAN board met in late summer 2017. Selisky, who had been able to walk on the Nai'a supported by other people, arrived in a wheelchair without diving gear. "There was a beautiful reef off the beach, and Lee said, 'I wish I could dive that,'" Stracener says. "We said, 'You have five instructors happy to escort you.'"

His friends lifted him from his wheelchair onto a board that floated him to a spot where they could get him in the water. There, Selisky made several final dives of 30 to 40 minutes. "If he saw something he liked, he'd give a thumbs-up," Frink says. "He never gave a thumbs-down."

Over the next several months, respiratory difficulties and other health complications caught up with Selisky, who died in July 2018. "Diving and his friends were his life," says Selisky's wife, Lorie, who pushed him to stay active throughout his illness.

After Selisky was diagnosed, Frink interviewed him for Alert Diver. "I feel I'm still upbeat 99 percent of the time," Selisky told Frink. "No one can make this better, so I want to enjoy my life as much as I can."