Greetings from THE Underwater Pornographer
Yes, that's what some have called me due to the video footage I shoot of mating behavior in the undersea world. Just take a gander at my "Munching and Mating in the Macrocystis" DVD (it's PG).
I have been diving for about 45 years now... originally in the freshwater quarries and lakes of the US Midwest, but in 1969 I moved to Santa Catalina Island in sunny southern California and have lived here essentially ever since.
I originally came out to teach marine biology on SCUBA to students at a private boys school. During that time I began working with Jean-Michel Cousteau in several of his programs including Project Ocean Search Catalina.
When the school closed in 1979, I took a series of different jobs relating to financial and other management of small businesses so I could stay on the island. I also continued to do intermittent projects with Jean-Michel and later his father, Jacques Yves Cousteau. This included working on their windship Alcyone during the filming of a 1986 two-hour TBS documentary on the Channel Islands.
In 1990 I decided to return to graduate school (despite the fact I had record albums... remember vinyl?... that were older than some of my fellowe students). I earned my MA and PhD in marine ecology and wrote a 771-page dissertation that's a sure cure for insomnia or a much needed doorstop. In essence I used satellite remote sensing images to detect kelp beds, integrated the resulting maps into a marine GIS (geographic information system), studied the areas where kelp was most persistent year-to-year, and tried to draw correlations between persistence and environmental factors. It was pretty much ground-breaking work, but I spent far too much time on a computer in the lab!
After receiving the PhD I became Vice President of the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy which owns 88% (42,000+ acres) of the island. After five years the politics got to me and I left the organization.
I decided it was time to return to my roots and got intensely involved in SCUBA again. After an around-the-Pacific backpacking and diving trip in 2001, I added underwater videography to my pursuits and haven't come up for air since!
I produce a daily 30-min TV show on the marine environment and write a weekly newspaper column on the same, both entitled "Dive Dry with Dr. Bill." I have also produced six commercial DVD's. My near-term goal is to get the TV show and the newspaper column syndicated in southern California, rake in the big bucks and head off for exotic dive locations including the Red Sea (next winter), the Galapagos, and a return to SE Asia. Eventually I'll finally don a dry suit and dive Antarctica.
My web site is full of information on southern California kelp forests and the marine life there including lots of pix, a full archive of the nearly 230- newspaper columns written to date, and information about my DVD's.
Best fishes!
Dr. Bill
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Originally Posted by DrBill
