Stanton Arthur Waterman (April 5, 1923 – August 10, 2023) was an American cinematographer and underwater film producer who was a five-time Emmy Award winner.^[1]

Life and career

Waterman first obtained a hand-made Japanese diving mask in the early 1930s, long before they were being made in the West or in common circulation. He first used it as a boy at Palm Beach, Florida.

After returning home from service in the US Navy^[2] during World War II, he became the first resident of Maine to purchase an aqualung, designed by Jacques Cousteau.^[3]

Waterman graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied with Robert Frost, in 1946 with a degree in English.^[4] He began his SCUBA diving career in the Bahamas where he owned and operated a diving charter business from 1954 until 1958. His big break came in 1965 when he filmed a year-long family trip to Tahiti. National Geographic purchased the rights to the work and showed it on television.^[5] He was a producer and photographer on the 1971 film Blue Water, White Death which was the first cinematic filming of the great white shark.

Waterman was the subject of a Discovery Channel biographical special titled The Man Who Loves Sharks.^[6] Working with his son, he won the first father and son Emmy for the National Geographic Explorer production Dancing With Stingrays.^[5]

Television credits include The American Sportsman (1965), The Bermuda Depths (1978), and The Explorers (1973) and film credits include The Deep (1977) and Jaws of Death (1977).^[7]

Waterman won five Emmy Awards for his work on underwater films and TV programs.^[3]

In 2005, Waterman wrote Sea Salt: Memories and Essays, with forewords by Peter Benchley and Howard Hall.^[8][9] He also wrote essays for Ocean Realm magazine.

In 2013, Waterman took his last dive in the Cayman Islands at the age of 90.^[3] He died on August 10, 2023, at the age of 100.^[10]