Stan Waterman’s Presentations
A pioneer underwater film producer and photographer, Stan Waterman has won five Emmy awards and received numerous other honors and awards in a career which spans nearly fifty years in the scuba diving industry. Having studied English and Shakespeare, this Dartmouth graduate has used his life-long love of language to create a unique style for which he has become a world-famous icon of the diving world. Mr. Waterman began with a dive charter business in the Bahamas, which progressed to world travel, filming, discovering and lecturing. A yearlong chronicle of his family’s life in Tahiti was purchased and aired by National Geographic, which further anchored his destiny to become the world’s foremost expert in underwater cinematography. Mr. Waterman has produced documentaries, television series and films for National Geographic, ABC, and ESPN, but is best known for his work in commercial film. He collaborated with Peter Gimbel on the classic shark film, Blue Water, White Death, and with his close friend Peter Benchley on The Deep, where Mr. Waterman was co-director of underwater photography and second unit. He went on to work with again with Benchley, on ten years worth of American Sportsman shows for ESPN. In 2001 the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame named Stan Waterman as an inductee in its charter year. Mr. Waterman has also received numerous other awards including the Cousteau Diver of the Year Award, two Gold Medals from the UK Underwater Film Festival, four Golden Eagles, and the Reaching Out Award from the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association. Stan Waterman and his family were featured in a Discovery Channel two-hour biographical special, The Man Who Loves Sharks. Mr. Waterman continues to dive, film, lecture, and hosts dive tours. He is the emcee at most of the major consumer scuba diving shows and underwater film festivals each year in North America and Great Britain.

Michael C. Barnette is the founder and director of the Association of Underwater Explorers (http://uwex.us), a coalition of divers dedicated to the research, exploration, documentation, and preservation of submerged cultural resources. Diving since 1990, he was enthralled by the impressive accomplishements achieved by the elder statesmen in the wreck diving community, such as Sir Leigh Bishop and Richard Kohler. Currently employed as a marine ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he published “Shipwrecks of the Sunshine State: Florida’s Submerged History,” which offers an extensive and comprehensive cross-section of Florida shipwreck narratives.

Leigh Bishop has been exploring shipwrecks for the last two decades and was one of the first British divers to use mixed gas in order to dive the deeper shipwrecks around England. His particular dedication to exploring the thousands of wrecks in the English Channel has led him to identify scores of previously unknown sites as well as discover several famous wrecks such as the Flying Enterprise.

During the 1990’s Leigh led the first expedition to explore a shipwreck deeper than 330ft in European waters when the Starfish team identified the British battleship HMS King Edward VII, lying at a depth of 380ft. He began using underwater still photography specifically for the Britannic and the several RMS Lusitania projects he was involved with. Britannic, the largest sunken ocean liner in the world, was one of his first deep photographic assignments in 1998 and he was later tasked with the job as official expedition photographer for the National Geographic Channel 2003 project.

Leigh went on to photograph such ocean liners such as the Transylvania sunk in the North Atlantic in 450ft of water. In 2003 he was a photographer on a NOAA scientific expedition to Titanic

Although his shipwreck travels have taken him around the globe he still continues to explore shipwrecks in what he calls his ‘back yard,’ the English Channel. The English Channel is a virtual museum of over 5,000 known shipwrecks. The vast majority of these wrecks are classic tramp steamers, all with a story to tell. Often the only way to identify many of the wrecks is by the recovery of the ship’s bell. By doing so we can finally document their history and what happened to them before they biologically implode and become nothing more than iron ore deposits on the ocean floor. “As long as they are there we shall keep photographing and documenting them for others to enjoy, others that may not have for whatever reason, the option of visiting them for themselves.” Leigh’s website includes many of his images and expeditions and can be found on www.deepimage.co.uk

Phil Rudin has been taking photographs underwater since he bought his first underwater camera while in the U.S. Navy in 1968. Phil is now Senior Photographer for Dive Chronicles Magazine and President of the South Florida Underwater Photography Society where he has served on the Board of Directors for over fourteen years.
Prior to working for Dive Chronicles, Phil was a Police Sergeant for the city of West Palm Beach, Florida and Dive Team Commander. With thirty years as a Police Diver Phil has vast experience with South Florida public safety diving and dive team management. During his police diving career Phil recovered countless vehicles, aircraft, evidence and bodies. Other duties included hull inspections on vessels to over 700 feet, underwater crime scene management, photography, collection of evidence, training, budget and equipment issues and more. Phil has been a true pioneer in the field of Police Diving in the state during his thirty year with West Palm Beach P.D.
Phil has also traveled extensively throughout the world to pursue his passion for underwater photography and his images have appeared in magazines such as Popular Science, Reflections, Rodale’s Scuba Diving, Underwater Journal, Skin Diver, Florida Underwater, Dive Chronicles and others.