When it comes to making scuba diving buoyancy compensators at Aqua Lung, it begins in Vista, California, where the company has had its corporate offices — including its R&D, engineering and testing teams for BCDs — for almost 20 years. If you don’t know the company’s history, it parallels that of the legendary ocean pioneer and explorer Jacques Cousteau, who in 1943 teamed with Émile Gagnan to develop the first “aqua-lung.”

The bold design innovation and spirit exhibited by Cousteau and Gagnan continues today in the Aqua Lung offices in California. And it was clearly evident when we sat down with Aqua Lung International’s CEO, Don Rockwell, to talk about the journey he and Eric Thorstenson — Aqua Lung America’s Director of Engineering — and the rest of their internal development team made in developing and bringing to market the Outlaw BC.

“We broke all the rules with the creation of the Outlaw,” says Rockwell. “The passion and vision that Eric and I shared was to have something very minimalistic.”

While a part of Aqua Lung’s corporate mission is focused on product innovation, the very nature of its global product distribution means that its gear has to appeal to a wide audience. “You always kind of defer to what you think you can sell to more people,” says Rockwell of the company’s R&D strategy. “Which isn’t a bad thing, but you always end up making something the market wants and not always something that really you want because you worry if it is what you want, it just might be too personal.”

For Rockwell and Thorstenson, what they wanted to bring to market, going back more than 20 years, was a minimalistic approach to a BC’s design — something akin to the naked motorcycle trend. (A naked bike is a stripped-down motorcycle, but its appeal is also aimed at experienced, confident riders.) “The main motivation wasn’t only about the harness that you put on your body,” says Rockwell, “it was also about having a very minimalistic buoyancy bladder.”

Rockwell and Thorstenson have 40 years of diving experience between them, and they knew many people were diving with too much lead. “When people learn to dive they’re overweighted because it makes it easier for their instructors,” continues Rockwell. “But then they stay that way. So we thought, if we could make something that required you to have better buoyancy skills wouldn’t that make better divers too? But that was more of a pipe dream.”

As the idea began to move from that 1990s dream to reality — “we’ve been making prototypes of the current configuration since 2010” — Rockwell and Thorstenson took advantage of a partnership Aqua Lung has with the Aggressor Fleet: Aqua Lung offers demo gear trips on various Aggressor yachts. “The divemasters would just totally get it,” says Rockwell. “We would bring samples along as we were developing the Outlaw, and they would see it and gravitate toward it and say, ‘I’d really like to try this.’”

Those early days of watching experienced divers give an enthusiastic thumbs-up to the Outlaw prototypes encouraged the Aqua Lung team to think there was a market for a specific type of buyer. “We knew we were onto something that was moving in the right direction, in reducing the capacity of the bladder, for making it more minimalistic and fewer encumbrances in the water,” says Rockwell. “Some of the people want to try it and other people would say, ‘that’s not for me.’ You kind of got a feeling of who your target audience is.”

As the team began experimenting with various prototypes, Aqua Lung was also developing modular components. “We kept on advancing the modular component, making it more robust, but we still didn’t have a place to apply it,” Rockwell says. Eventually, the team realized the Outlaw prototype could use the modular pieces to customize it to make different versions and configurations.

It was the perfect marriage between a minimalistic approach to the buoyancy bladder and customization options. The fully modular design lets you swap air cells (12 or 25 pound), straps and soft back plate for 27 different size configurations. The parts attach with rugged “ModLock™” connectors that release by inserting a simple tool — even a car key will get the job done. The whole design is so minimal you almost feel like you’re not wearing a BC, as ScubaLab discovered during testing last winter. The Outlaw’s name has a history of its own. “When I started in this business, I was with Sea Quest, which was acquired by Aqua Lung in 1990,” Rockwell explains. “Sea Quest specialized in and was recognized for buoyancy compensator development. One of our customers had a particular idea for a BC. It’s nothing like what we’ve come up with, but he had the name. Because it was different in the way it would be used, he thought the name Outlaw was the perfect name. This is going back to the mid- to late ‘80s. We never developed that product back then, but the Outlaw name was pretty cool. I like to say it was a name waiting for a product.”

Internally, though, there were a few stumbling blocks. “It was different. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, and we were told it needed more features like D-rings. We put our foot down,” Rockwell says. The only concession we made, he says, is that “we added the 25-pound bladder option for those who need the additional buoyancy.”

“We have stuck to our guns,” Rockwell says. “The Outlaw for someone who has better buoyancy skills and is a more advanced diver. It’s for the bad-ass, skillful diver.”

ScubaLab Testers Choice: The Aqua Lung Outlaw took Testers Choice for back-inflation BCs during ScubaLab's 2017 BC test.

Visit Aqua Lung's website for product details on the Outlaw.

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