Short essay on influence of sea hunt

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I enjoyed "Sea Hunt" but I don't think it affected the way I dove back then. After all, Lloyd Bridges wasn't a real diver and had to be trained for the show by Bob Meistrell. Occasional co-star and my friend Zale Parry however was a REAL diver and had set the women's deep diving record off my island (Catalina) back in the mid-50s. The show itself focused on story lines that were generally only tangentially related to the marine environment.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau's early work had greater influence on me since he focused on the marine life and my interest was in becoming a marine biology.
 
Jacques-Yves Cousteau's early work had greater influence on me since he focused on the marine life and my interest was in becoming a marine biology.

One of the lines that I cut from the essay (for a future blog) was "Anecdotally, people cite Sea Hunt as the reason they got into diving and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau as the reason they became marine biologists."

I had a chance to be on the Nautilus Explorer with Zale Perry ten years ago down the Inside Passage. During an upland excursion at an abandoned settlement, she led a hike up the hill that exhausted people half her age, and she was doing trail maintenance along the way. About five years ago, she was with a group of us that went on an annual trip to Avalon for diving and relaxation. Conditions prevented us from diving, so we did the treasure hunt to discover the things hiding in plain sight in town followed by lunch on the pier. She could really relate with my 19 yo nephew. We had a great time. Shortly thereafter, I received a autographed copy of Zale's Sports Illustrated cover from the organizer of the trip. It now hangs framed in my home. the amazing thing is, the magazine and I are about the same age.
 
Growing up in rural NE Oregon in the late 50's and early 60's, Sea Hunt was the first time I "saw" anyone SCUBA dive. We only had one UHF TV channel with a transmitter 50+ miles away, we didn't get TV in our house until I was in my early teens. I don't remember seeing Jacques Cousteau episodes until much later. When I was more or less coerced into taking a SCUBA class at the Naval Academy (a long story), the only mental images I had came from that show. I bought a double hose regulator in 1966 (Royal Aquamaster, which I still have), even though single hose regulators were starting to proliferate, primarily because of that Mike Nelson image...and a lot of U.S. Divers advertising copy about the advantages of a balanced first stage.
 
If someone was coming at him with a big knife to cut his regulator hoses my money would be on Lloyd Bridges over Jacques Cousteau any day. To say Lloyd Bridges was not a real diver is like saying Donald Trump is not a real President.
 
^ They reused the same footage of the regulator hose being cut so many times in different episodes even I recognized it, but still, they must have gone through a lot of hoses. And I carried a BFK for a loooonnnng time just in case.
 
Although I spent a lot of my youth at the beaches of Southern California I never thought about diving until I was married. My first wife grew up in the Nevada desert watching Sea Hunt. When she moved in with me one of the first things she wanted to do was snorkel locally. After a year or so of free diving we decided to get certified.

A couple of years went by and we were making one of our first 200 dives at Marineland in Rancho Palos Verdes. There was a film crew there at the time making a movie called Hot Shots! with Lloyd Bridges. I'm not an autograph seeker and usually don't like to bother anyone but I saw Mr. Bridges sitting in a chair looking bored. There was a lull between setting up shots so I asked him if he would like to borrow my gear and go for a quick dive with my wife. That would have made for a unique page in her logbook. He politely declined, saying that he would love to dive at Marineland again but the insurance company would frown on the idea.
 
I fell in love with the whole undersea scuba thing from watching Seahunt, as a near infant !! I still get all moist and giggly when I see old clips of someone using a double hose and triple tanks ! (I loved that intro video on VDH's website!)
Of all the old GI Joes and accessories I got handed down from a favorite uncle when i was a kid, by far my favorite was the scuba diver and his gear.
I used to try and breathe underwater in a swimming pool using a piece of garden hose, but it wasn't until years later, when i was ascending the various PADI cert levels, that I found out why I could never take a breath, even from only a foot or so deep.
I would have to agree, Seahunt was as responsible as anything for inspiring my love of the water, and especially, going under the water.
 
If someone was coming at him with a big knife to cut his regulator hoses my money would be on Lloyd Bridges over Jacques Cousteau any day. To say Lloyd Bridges was not a real diver is like saying Donald Trump is not a real President.

Oh, please. Lloyd Bridges wasn't a diver until he was trained for the show itself. Zale Parry was already an accomplished diver. And JYC would know that when someone cut the EXHAUST side of his double hose regulator he was in a lot less danger than the script suggested!
 

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