Simon works as an anaesthesiologist at Auckland City Hospital, a diving physician at North Shore Hospital (Auckland), and is Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. For the last 3 years he has been ranked by Expertscape.com as the world’s foremost expert in both decompression sickness and air embolism. Simon co-authored the hyperbaric and diving medicine chapter for the last four editions of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. He has invited review articles in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Simon was in the first teams to dive and identify three historic deep shipwrecks in Australia and New Zealand, including one in 2002 which was the deepest wreck dive undertaken worldwide at the time. He was in the 2020 and 2023 Wetmules teams pushing the Pearse Resurgence (NZ) to 245m and performing the first deep rebreather dive using hydrogen. He was conferred Fellowship of the Explorers’ Club of New York in 2006, and was the Rolex Diver of the Year in 2015.