[1][2][3] Bennett first broke the record in 1999 when he reached 200 m (660 ft) accompanied by Chuck Driver.
Having founded Atlantis Dive in the Philippines in the late 1990s, Bennett and his world record breaking team, including Ron Loos, Mark Cox and Targa Mann went on to establish Tech Dive Academy in Port Douglas, Australia.
[4] In the early 2000s, Bennett and Loos made the first dives to the MV Princess of the Orient wreck site, which is located off Fortune Island, outside and to the south of Manila Bay.
[5][6] In 2001, he located the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy dreadnought Yamashiro in the Surigao Strait (between the Philippine islands of Leyte and Dinagat) through sound scans, but could not confirm it before his death.
John Bennett went missing on 15 March 2004 in a commercial diving incident in Korea.