Ocean
Watch
Monday, March 23, 1998
Lloyd Bridges, ‘Sea Hunt’
were formative influences
LLOYD Bridges' death last week whisked me back to 1957,
to a small apartment in a Milwaukee suburb. I was 9 years old and
miserable as a kid can get from chicken pox.
"Don't scratch!" my mother told me, dotting
calamine lotion on my lesions. She moved me to the living-room couch,
turned on the TV, then left the room, unaware that a major event was about
to take place in my life: I was going to see my first episode of "Sea
Hunt."
The show started. My jaw hung slack and I even stopped
scratching as I watched the scuba-diving adventures of Lloyd Bridges'
character, Mike Nelson.
Afterward, I hurried to the kitchen. "Mom! I saw a
show about a man who could breathe underwater!"
"Put your slippers on."
"He could stay down for a really long time. He
swam in this sunken ship where some big fish were hiding. Then a bad guy
cut his air hose with a knife."
"Get back in bed. You're going to catch your
death."
OK, so my mom wasn't didn't care about scuba diving. It
didn't matter. The seed was sown.
As I pondered Lloyd Bridges' death and my enthusiasm
for his "Sea Hunt" show, I wondered if others of my generation
were so moved. I called Waikiki Aquarium Director Bruce Carlson, who grew
up in Michigan.
"Sure, I liked 'Sea Hunt,'" he said. "I
also liked Jacques Cousteau's TV programs." Carlson said he finds it
interesting that he learned nothing about nature or the marine world at
school. His early knowledge came strictly from his grandparents, parents
and television.
"Television has a bad reputation, but sometimes a
TV show sparks an interest," he said. "But even if videos start
something, they aren't enough. After that, people want to see animals in
aquariums and zoos, then in the wild. You want to see the real
thing."
Terry O'Halloran, director of Project Development at
Atlantis Submarines, also wanted the real thing. "I loved 'Sea
Hunt,'" the Nebraska native told me. "Mike Nelson was my
hero."
When O'Halloran was 16, he learned to scuba dive in a
South Dakota lake and insisted on donning his scuba gear Mike Nelson
style: over his head. "This was really hard," O'Halloran said,
"because two tanks (Mike's system) were incredibly heavy." For
countless dives, O'Halloran heaved the bulky gear over his head and down
his outstretched arms, only to learn, years later, that the gear Bridges
donned so effortlessly on TV was a lightweight fiberglass model of the
real thing.
Another person I spoke to was Honolulu Mayor Jeremy
Harris, a marine biologist by education. Harris, who grew up on the East
Coast, told me he never missed an episode of "Sea Hunt."
Like O'Halloran, Harris was avid about getting
underwater. "We went diving in the Atlantic in 50-degree water with
about 3 feet visibility," he said. "Of course, this was before
there was any emphasis on certification."
Harris got scuba-certified in 1974 and still loves to
dive, only now his excursions are in warm, clear water. He just returned
from a dive trip to Palau.
I enjoyed reminiscing about "Sea Hunt" with
friends and acquaintances who also love the ocean. Did the show guide us
to that affinity? Who knows? The events and experiences that lead a person
up a certain path in life are a complicated mix. All I know for sure is
that when Lloyd Bridges died, a lot of us were moved.
"Lloyd Bridges died," lifeguard Mark
Cunningham informed Ocean Safety Director Ralph Goto on the day it
happened.
"Mmm."
"Ralph," Mark said. "This is
important."
Many of us agree.
