Sea Hunt, Mike Nelson, and the Popularizing of Scuba Diving

Sixty years ago, America was introduced to the ex-Navy frogman, Mike Nelson, played by Lloyd Bridges in the television show, Sea Hunt.  

Week after week, Mike Nelson for one-half hour faced all the dangers of the underwater world that the show’s writers could imagine and he continued to do it for four seasons and 155 episodes.  

For most of its run, Sea Hunt was a highly rated show.  Scuba diving was in its childhood  as was television, which in those pre-cable, pre-streaming days, consisted of three networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), a handful of independent stations in major cities, and was broadcast in black and white, sometimes with a very short broadcast day.  So to what extent did Sea Hunt popularize scuba diving?

Gary Knoll, in his book, "America’s Ocean Wilderness: A Cultural History of Twentieth Century Wilderness," writes “the popularity of underwater recreation mushroomed shortly after the war.  The explanation for why so many Americans took to the water defies simple explanation.”  He suggests a number of factors contributed to the popularization including wartime coverage of underwater demolition teams; the growth of spear fishing clubs; the work of artists such as Hans Hass, especially his movie “Diving to Adventure” (a movie about skin diving and spear fishing) and Eugenia Clark’s book “Lady With a Spear”;  the emergence of those other underwater  enthusiasts than spear fishers  “who donned mask and snorkel simply to observe underwater life” and the advent of scuba technology which made ocean depths “a place of relaxed recreation” although he does recognize the element of danger that the activity offered.   According to Knoll, this trend was well underway by the mid-1950s.  Knoll attributes widespread popularization of enthusiasm for undersea exploration to Jacques Cousteau and the advent of his undersea technology. 

Knoll’s analysis indicates the emergence of underwater recreation evolved in three phases: 

1) skin-divers-as-spearfishers and hunters; 

2) skin-diver-as-observer, and

3) scuba-diver-as-relaxed-recreationist.  

Knoll does not acknowledge any contribution by shows such as Sea Hunt, preferring to concentrate on the contribution of films and books in the evolution until the premier of the TV special “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.”  Still, for many of baby boomers and beyond, “Sea Hunt” became synonymous with “scuba” just as “Piper Cub” became synonymous with general aviation airplanes.

So what role, if any, did Sea Hunt play in the popularization of scuba diving?  If the “Golden Age” of scuba and television does indeed coincide in the mid-to-late 1950s, would not combination of the two social trends to be very pronounced? While it is difficult to attribute the mainstreaming and popularizing of any sport or activity to any single factor, there is evidence that suggests that Sea Hunt greatly influenced the third phase of evolution described by Kroll. 

Albert Tillman, in his book, "I Thought I Saw Atlantis, Reminiscences of a Pioneer Skin & Scuba Diver," called Sea Hunt, “diving’s visual recruiter.” He posits that while the pioneer divers scoffed at the errors in the show, “the young men and women who would become the fully and truly first generation diving almost exclusively with SCUBA loved it and wanted to be Mike Nelsons.”  He describes Bridge’s character as a “surrogate guidance counselor for the second generation of divers that emerged in the 1950’s.  The old crustacean crowd of skin divers out of the 1940s grumbled….But the new kids on the block glued their eyes to that little screen and wanted to do just what Mike Nelson was doing when they grew up.”

By 1962, Sea Hunt was off the air and on its way to syndication that continues to today on cable outlets such as This TV and the evolution outlined by Knoll was complete.  The instruction manual from U.S. Divers, “Let’s Go Diving” released that year noted, “millions of men, women, and children…throughout all the oceans...and inland lakes and rivers…are playing, exploring, and hunting underwater.”  Note the order of activity, playing-exploring-hunting, the reverse of the three phase evolution.  The guide continues, “skin diving is for everyone.  No matter what your particular interest or situation is, the submarine world offers a challenge, an excitement which cannot be matched on the surface…The variety of interests open to the skin diver are as limitless as the vast expanse of the underwater world itself.” 

Ironically, with the recent popularization of breath hold diving, as captured in James Nestor’s book “Deep, Freediving Renegade Science, and what the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves,” and renaissance of the skin-diver-as-spearfisher, we may see the re-emergence of the first two phases of diving.