| Note: I wrote the following story about Stan thirteen years ago. This month Stan turns 80 years old. Today, he continues to dive enthusiastically all around the world. As I write this note, he is diving in Indonesia. In July, I will be joining Ron and Valerie Taylor, Teddy Tucker, and Peter Benchley aboard a liveaboard dive boat in French Polynesia. During these last thirteen years, little has changed with Stan’s unfailing pursuit of diving adventure. He still hosts numerous film festivals each year, hosts numerous diving expeditions, offers his help and guidance to new underwater videographers, continues provide inspiration for all of us whose careers have been molded by his leadership, and continues to dive with childish enthusiasm. Happy 80th birthday, Stan!
The full moon ballooned over the horizon and pulled on the waters of the Eastern Pacific. Tidal currents rushed by the tiny volcanic cinder cone, called Isle Benedicto, and the submerged pinnacle one half mile off shore. I stood on a ledge sixty feet below the surface on the lee side of the pinnacle and watched as schools of redtailed triggerfish tumbled in the current. The water was a deep purple color created by some strange mixture of vermilion afternoon light and crystal clear subtropical water which has been slightly roiled with volcanic ash. Manta rays circled the pinnacle like pterodactyls soaring a prehistoric mountain spire. It was magic hour underwater.
From where I rested on the ledge I could see Stan Waterman one hundred feet away filming a manta as it gracefully revolved around him. He hung in open water alternately rising and falling in turbulence as the current swept him away from the pinnacle. Just when I thought he had drifted too far, he broke off from the manta and began the long hard swim upstream through the turbulent eddies created by the current rushing over the pinnacle. I thought about swimming out and joining him for the long swim back, but it would be pointless and he wouldn't really appreciate the gesture. Although Stan's body is sixty-seven years old, his mind is young and agile; still fueled by the wildness, enthusiasm, and humor of a man in his twenties. And at sixty-seven, if he is a less powerful diver than he was twenty years earlier, it is not by any great measure. On each dive during this expedition he had impressed me with the strength he retains. Carrying the bulky video camera, he pushed back through the current with long powerful strokes. The current was strong and his progress was slow. Still, many sport divers would not have had the endurance to make any headway at all. I watched and hoped he wouldn't push himself too far. He would certainly be exhausted by the time he made it back to the pinnacle, if he made it back. It was October 1991. We were working together on a film for The Discovery Channel about the Waterman family. Stan's son, Gar, was along with us as was his daughter, Susy. Stan's other son, Gordy, was directing his first major television commercial in Europe while Stan's wife, Susy, tended the fort back home. It was one of many film expeditions I've joined Stan for during the last fifteen years. I first met him during the filming of the feature motion picture THE DEEP in 1976, I was a diving instructor and had recently bought my first Nikonos camera. I was hired, with Chuck Nicklin's recommendation, because I was a spearfisherman. The underwater production team for the film would be working in the Coral Sea and needed someone to help attract sharks for the shark scenes in the film. It was the beginning of my career in underwater film production. For Stan, it was a high point in an already long and remarkable career. He and Al Giddings were co-directors of underwater cinematography for the film. For me, working on THE DEEP was the break that got me started in the business because it was how I got to know Stan. Without Stan's influence in the years that followed, I might still be selling snorkels for a living today. I took the $2500 I made during the filming of THE DEEP and commissioned the building of an underwater movie camera. Nearly a year later, I tested my first three rolls of film in the camera by filming blue sharks off the coast of San Diego. I maintained contact with Stan on a somewhat regular basis because we had forged a friendship in the Coral Sea and because he seemed willing to talk to an aspiring underwater filmmaker. One afternoon I called and he told me he had landed a contract to make a prime-time CBS film about sharks. He asked if I had any new ideas and I told him about the footage I'd been shooting of blue sharks. Stan had not filmed blue sharks before. I didn't mention that the footage represented the first three rolls I'd run through my new camera as a test and were the only three rolls I'd ever shot. "Oh," he said. "I didn't
know you were an underwater filmmaker."
There was a brief hesitation on at the other end of the line then, "Why don't you send your footage over and let me have a look. Maybe you'd like to work with me on this project." "Yes," I said. "I'd like to work with you on it if I have a chance". This may have been history’s greatest. Three rolls of film shot as a camera test hardly made me a filmmaker. Fortunately, Stan didn't ask me to detail my qualifications. In 1978 Stan finished the film. It was called simply "Sharks" and was aired as a network prime-time special and as a Survival Anglia Special in the United Kingdom. For Stan it was one of many major underwater television productions he had made. For me it was the first. A great school of large jacks passed behind the pinnacle and moved out toward Stan. He stopped pumping into the current, aimed his camera, and took a quick shot of the school as they passed by. Their mirror like flanks flashed an amber color in the strange afternoon light as they circled around him. Stan finished the shot and began working into the current again. He'd lost ten yards. It was hard for me to imagine that the man out there in the current was diving before I was born. In 1936, Stan was thirteen years old. A friend of the family gave him a pair of Ama pearl diving goggles brought back from Japan. It was then that the seed was deposited in his imagination. But the seed remained dormant through his years in college where he earned a Dartmouth degree (where he studied under Robert Frost) and was a regional champion cross country runner. By 1951 Stan was a blueberry farmer in Maine. He was married, had children and was well settled. But that year he read the first accounts of Aqua Lung diving by Jacques Cousteau. His imagination was rekindled; the seed began to germinate. Later that same year he saw an ad for an Aqua Lung in a mail order catalog. He immediately ordered one. Then, a few months later on a cold November morning, Stan made his first dive in Walkers Pond, a small fresh water puddle a few miles from his home in Maine. A variety of neighbors and friends turned out to witness the spectacle as Stan suited up and walked into the pond. There was no SCUBA certification class, no text book, no instructor. Stan's wife, Susy, looked on with apprehension and Stan's children whimpered as their father disappeared below the surface. Walker's Pond was fifteen feet deep. Stan sat on a rock alone and breathed underwater. He thought he was in heaven.
The experience in Walker's Pond changed Stan's life forever. He was no longer satisfied with being a farmer. For him there was little adventure in farming blueberries. Adventure was being had by the likes of Jacques Cousteau and Hans Haas. These first undersea pioneers were heroes to Stan. He wanted to share in the adventure. So Stan commissioned the building of a forty foot boat and made plans to enter the diving business. The boat was launched in 1954 and christened ZINGARO. He then packed up his young family and went off to the Bahamas where he hung out a shingle that read "Dive Guide and Boat for Hire. Learn to Dive. Explore the Ocean World". Stan acquired his first 16mm underwater movie camera the same year he started his diving business in the Bahamas. It was a primitive system and only took fifty feet of film per load which gave him just under one and a half minutes of running time during a dive. But he used the system for two years and he began to make underwater movies. The manta emerged from the blue haze behind Stan and slowly winged its way upstream until it passed over Stan's column of exhaust bubbles. There the great ray rose sharply, stalling on a wing, and hesitated as the bubbles percolated across its skin. Then the ray side-slipped into a steep turn before gliding down stream in the current. Stan didn't see it as he concentrated on working his way toward the lee of the pinnacle. I didn't point the ray out to him because I thought he might take the signal as a suggestion to film the animal. I thought it better that he reach the shelter of the wall where he could catch his breath. The first time I filmed manta rays was with Stan. He was director of underwater photography on an episode of the ABC American Sportsman series and I was a producer and second underwater camera. We were working in the Sea of Cortez and got wonderful images of Peter Benchley and Gordy Waterman riding an enormous manta ray. Both Stan and I took spectacular still photographs as well during the shoot. Benchley later wrote a story about the manta encounter for National Geographic Magazine and the article was illustrated with Stan's and my photographs. The American Sportsman film won Stan his first Emmy. He showed the film widely at film festivals around the world and the Marisula Seamount became one of the most famous sport diving destinations in the world. Stan and Peter Benchley met soon after JAWS was published. Stan read an article about Peter in the New York Times and wrote him a letter suggesting they get together and talk about their common interest in sharks. They became good friends and close neighbors after Peter purchased a home in Princeton near the Waterman home. In the years that followed, they made many films together including a show called Spirit of Adventure which won Stan his third Emmy. Today Stan's award case is cluttered with five Emmy awards. More than any other underwater filmmaker has earned. Much of Stan's underwater work has been related to sharks. He has always said that sharks are "box office". Scenes of divers in close proximity to dangerous sharks are always in demand and it's a demand Stan has made a living of satisfying. The first time I heard of Stan Waterman was when I saw a film about sharks. It was, perhaps, the greatest shark film ever made - BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH. I was a freshman in college when I walked into a theater with a couple diving buddies. We sat in the front row sharing a bottle of wine we had smuggled in under a peacoat and stared in slack-jawed amazement at the insane risks Stan, Peter Gimble, and Ron and Valerie Taylor were taking as they left the cages in the midst of sharks in feeding frenzies. Just as Hans Haas and Jacques Cousteau had been heroes to Stan, the people I saw in BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH were heroes to me and hundreds like me who later chose professions in underwater exploration. Perhaps it was then that I subconsciously decided to follow along on that "road less traveled".
Certainly, Stan influenced the direction I decided to take with my life. Perhaps more importantly, after I met him, he helped me get started in that direction. And I am not the only one. Marty Snyderman, David Doubilet, Mark Lawrance, Jack McKenney, Nick Calyonois, Lisa Truitt, and many other successful underwater filmmakers and still photographers can trace the success of their careers directly or indirectly to Stan Waterman's influence and encouragement. Stan continues to influence the art of underwater cinematography not only through his television films, but also as host of film festivals and as dive expedition leader. Stan's presence on stage lends a special and unique quality to the film festivals he attends. But most of Stan's new diving friends are made during the diving expeditions he leads. Each year he leads several specialized tours to exotic diving locations. Many of these trips are special expeditions to film whale sharks, white sharks, or some other unusual marine creature. Those who attend one of Stan's tours get more than just a week or two of good diving. They get to know one of sport diving's most famous and most experienced pioneers; a man whose character has helped shape the art of underwater photography worldwide; a sport diving legend. Stan was only a few yards from the shelter of the pinnacle when the manta ray emerged again from the twilight. Then another ray appeared and there were two. This time Stan saw them. He checked the power position on his video camera as he turned and then, with a signal to me to come along, swam off downstream through the current in the wake of the huge rays. So much for a rest in the lee of the pinnacle, I thought. Once again he had surprised me with his endurance. I wondered what kind of shape I'll be in when I'm sixty-seven years old as I checked the light meter on my movie camera, dialed F-4 on the aperture control, then pushed off the wall and once again followed Stan downstream. Happy birthday, Stan. And thank you!
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