The Leather Lungs Award is presented to an individual from the most recent HHUC Scuba Course graduating class who is the most active diver in her or his first year of diving, having logged the most dives.
We found the records are somewhat spotty for the early years of The Loyal Order of the Leather Lungs. A club history published in 1977 indicated that Jim Blasko was awarded the Leather Lungs in 1968. In the early days, The Loyal Order of the Leather Lungs Award was in recognition of members who used very little air during their dives. Larry Lundy won the Loyal Order of the Leather Lungs Award in 1974. The actual award, with two little blowup lungs mounted with pipette, was created by Joel Troster.
Club lore claims that Larry Lundy could end a dive with more air than he started. Soon it became apparent that a humorous award for low air consumption could be encouraging unsafe diving practices, so the focus was changed.
After 1975 the criteria for the Leather Lungs changed to recognize one of our newly certified divers each year.
List of The Leather Lungs Award Recipients
| 1968 | Jim Blasko |
| 1974 | Larry Lundy |
| 1975 | Bob Belcher |
| 1976 | Gerry Mintz |
| 1977 | Gain Wong |
| 1978 | John Todd |
| 1979 | Steve McCann |
| 1980 | Diana Mansell |
| 1981 | Steve Younker |
| 1982 | Debbie Selig |
| 1983 | Bob Sheperd |
| 1984 | Tim Richards |
| 1985 | Zana Maksimovic |
| 1986 | Mark Bloor |
| 1987 | Paul Carter |
| 1988 | Alison Liddell |
| 1989 | Dimitra Tzamtzis |
| 1990 | Pattison |
| 1991 | unknown |
| 1992 | Edmond Wolfe |
| 1993 | Henry |
| 1994 | Azizi |
| 1995 | Amer Mirza |
| 1996 | Martin Bonert |
| 1997 | Mark Kummerer |
| 1998 | Rebecca Metcalfe |
| 1999 | Sadie Lewis |
| 2000 | Jeff Elliott |
| 2001 | unknown |
| 2002 | unknown |
| 2003 | Garry Beirne |
| 2004 | Connie Lamm |
| 2005 | Michael Starr |
| 2006 | Will Tremain |
| 2007 | Sharon Reid |
| 2008 | Roberta Lee |
| 2009 | Niko Zhou |
| 2010 | Harry Eeuwes |
| 2011 | Jason Grenier and Tammy Felskie |
| 2012 | Mahdieh Fadaei Ghotbi and Amin Joushaghani |
| 2013 | Andres Covarrubias |
| 2014 | Dave Nowak |
| 2015 | Eric Bryce |
| 2016 | Jason Chen |
| 2017 | Xerxes Yang |
| 2018 | Crystal Liu |
| 2019 | Colin Anderson |
| 2020 | Covid-19 Pandemic – no diving |
| 2021 | Covid-19 Pandemic – no diving |
| 2022 | |
| 2023 | |
| 2024 | |
| 2025 | |
| 2026 | |
| 2027 | |
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| 2029 | |
| 2030 |