Jim Burgess was born in Champaign, Illinois and moved to the Gulf of Mexico in 1957 to work in oilfield diving. He got into diving in the Navy during the Korean War where he worked on mine recovery. When he got out of the service, the offshore oil and gas industry was beginning to take off, so Jim moved to Houma, Louisiana. His first job in the Gulf was on Grand Isle repairing damage from a hurricane. After that job, he moved to Morgan City, took a job with a new company, and started working overseas. He worked for several companies and then wound up at Dick Evans Divers, which was later bought by McDermott. He was a diver on Westinghouse’s first total saturation job outside Roanoke, Virginia. Jim left McDermott in 1978 and worked as a consultant until 1995 when he took the overseas job he still holds today.