2013 Divers of the Year

Clive Cussler grew up in Alhambra, California. He later attended Pasadena City College, but enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War where he served as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer in the Military Air Transport Service.

Upon his discharge, he became a copywriter and later creative director for two leading ad agencies. Clive Cussler began writing in 1965 and published his first novel featuring Dirk Pitt® in 1973. His first non-fiction work, The Sea Hunters, was released in 1996. Because of this work the Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York considered The Sea Hunters in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis and awarded Cussler a Doctor of Letters degree in May of 1997.

Clive is the founder of the National Underwater & Marine Agency, (NUMA) a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to American maritime and naval history. Cussler and his crew of marine experts and NUMA volunteers have discovered over 60 historically significant underwater wreck sites. Some of these finds include the C.S.S. Hunley, best known as the first submarine to sink a ship in battle and the U-20, the U-boat that sank the Lusitania. In addition to being Chairman of NUMA, Cussler is a Fellow in both the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographic Society in London.

Stephen Frink is among the world’s most frequently published underwater photographers, and is a Canon Explorer of Light, the only marine specialist within this very elite group of photographers. He is presently the publisher of a lavish new quarterly magazine for the Divers Alert Network, Alert Diver. Previously, his editorial work appeared in Scuba Diving as Director of Photography, and as a long-time contributor to Skin Diver magazine.

Frink has authored a coffee table book entitled Wonders Of The Reef, and teaches advanced sessions of the Stephen Frink School of Underwater Digital Imaging in his home waters of Key Largo, Florida. Clients for assignment photography over the past three decades have included Canon, Nikon, Victoria’s Secret, Aqua Lung, Oceanic, Scubapro, Mercury Marine, Jantzen, Alcan Aluminum, R.J. Reynolds, Seaquest, Henderson Aquatics, Club Med, major ad agencies, and scores of resorts and live-aboard dive boats throughout the world. Rolex Watch Company has also engaged Frink for product endorsement.

Carl Roessler came to the diving industry from the early computer industry. After working for GE and IBM, Carl was appointed Director of Computation by Yale University in 1964, with responsibility for two major computer centers for scientific and commercial users. In 1969, Carl followed his dream and moved with his wife and children to the Caribbean, where he established a diving operation serving Curacao and Bonaire. For three years, Carl hosted dive groups organized by Dewey Bergman’s See & Sea Travel in San Francisco. Bergman then approached Carl to move to San Francisco and develop diving destinations around the world.

For the next twenty-five years, Carl traveled around the world helping entrepreneurs develop and market their destinations—many of which are today’s most prestigious destinations. During those years, he became a leading underwater photographer so he could show divers what could be experienced around the underwater world. For all those years, Carl Roessler had the best job in the world!

During the early years of Beneath the Sea, Joe Stella supported our efforts by being outgoing and positive both to the Ocean Pals Project and the idea of bringing youth into the sport of diving. He was innovative with the change in trends and designs, always customer focused and dedicated to growth. He did everything with a smile. Most importantly, he believed in the future of Beneath the Sea. He was a mentor, a friend, and a professional.

Today, Joe Stella is the Group Vice President of Diving at Johnson Outdoors, a manufacturer and marketer of many of the world’s best known outdoor recreational brands. From his first dives with his brother in Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts Joe was exposed to the Scubapro brand. Divers in the cold waters of the North East relied on durability and dependability while hunting lobsters and the shipwrecks in the area. Joe wanted to become a professional diver and left the East Coast to study physics, physiology, diving operations and mixed gas theory at the College of Oceaneering in Wilmington, California.

Joe went on to become a diving supervisor and superintendent in charge of planning and managing teams of divers. He worked on oil rigs throughout the North Sea in the Norwegian and UK waters, as well as in the Tasman Sea in New Zealand waters. In 1987 Joe retired from commercial diving to pursue a new job with his older brother John. In 1997, Joe was hired as Vice President/Sales and Marketing at Dacor and moved to Chicago. In 1999 Scubapro recruited Joe and he moved from Chicago to San Diego, California to work in his new position as General Manager of the Americas and Director of Marketing worldwide. When Joe got the top job he knew what he wanted to do.

Between leaving the oil rigs and landing the top job at Scubapro, Joe’s passion for diving never waned. In his various positions he has patented a couple of diving inventions in the dive computer and buoyancy compensator categories. He has worked on the design of military wetsuits and served as a technical advisor for Hollywood films and various television series. As his work takes Joe around the world he dives in many locations, often to test equipment. But his favorite place to dive is where he first learned, Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts. Joe hasn’t stopped diving for fun and relaxation.