DeepWater Buoyancy Collaborates with UNE Students

Sidney “Dave” Cook

December 11, 1935  –  January 15, 2025

It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our dear friend and mentor Sidney Cook.

Many people in the subsea industry will remember him as Dave Cook, the founder of Flotation Technologies, and a pioneer in the development and use of syntactic foam for subsea buoyancy.

Electric Boat

In his early career, Dave worked at General Dynamics’ Electric Boat.  While working there, Dave and his team studied ways to salvage sunken submarines. They proposed using a novel material called syntactic foam, a specialty composite made from hollow glass microspheres and epoxy resin systems. The Navy ultimately didn’t want it, however it turned out the oil company ESSO did. They contracted Electric Boat to have Dave build the world’s first drill riser buoyancy modules for use in offsetting the weight of subsea drilling equipment.

Electric Boat opted not to be in the oil business, so Dave partnered up with a company in Massachusetts called Data Packaging. That company had been producing injection-molded hollow plastic spheres that were used as additional buoyancy in the drilling riser project. After a short period of time producing material at Data Packaging, there was an oil spill in Santa Barbara.  The drilling in California came to a halt and with it, drill riser buoyancy. Data Packaging and Dave were out and Dave was onto the next project.

New Ventures

Dave would go on to work with Emerson and Cuming in Massachusetts and continue building drill risers, but that relationship was short lived. Dave joined up with a company in Maine called Shape, Inc. The owner Tony Gelardi had been at Data Packaging and started his own injection molding business. Dave went to work with Shape making drill riser buoyancy and other syntactic foam products that were beginning to be used in oceanographic work.

In 1979 Dave founded his own company Flotation Products, which would later become Flotation Technologies.  Dave built his business with his family, growing it from a 3-person team making products in their barn to a company that, at its peak, employed well over 100 people.

In 2008 the Cook family sold Flotation Technologies and Dave retired.  In 2013, DeepWater Buoyancy spun out of that company to continue the tradition of supplying subsea buoyancy to the world from the same small town of Biddeford, Maine. Dave and his family remained close to today’s DeepWater Buoyancy management and team.

Team Chile Photo
Dave Cook with a Flotation Technologies buoy.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Dave often commented on how blessed he was and how so many people helped him over the years. This is exactly how we feel when we think of Dave and the Cook family. Without perseverance, luck and the Cook family, our company would not exist.

Dave will be missed by all who knew him. He was a man that changed the world in so many ways.

To learn more about Dave and life outside of work, please read his obituary.

Team Chile Photo

About DeepWater Buoyancy, Inc.

DeepWater Buoyancy, Inc., located in Maine USA, provides subsea buoyancy products for offshore energy, oceanographic, military, and technology companies around the world. Customers have relied on our products for over forty-five years, from the ocean surface to depths exceeding six thousand meters. Learn more at DeepWaterBuoyancy.com

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