Dick Anderson, 73; Diving Pioneer Employed Technical Skill, Bravery and Humor

Dick Anderson, an adventure-seeking diving pioneer whose multifaceted career paralleled the birth and growth of recreational diving and included making key technical contributions to diving equipment, has died. He was 73.

Anderson, who also produced humorous underwater films, died June 3 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in a hospital in West Hills, said his wife, Bridget.

A 2004 inductee into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, Anderson launched his more than half-century underwater odyssey in the 1940s when he bought a $1.98 face mask and began skin diving and spearfishing for food off the coast of Santa Monica.

In 1950, Anderson began working for Westwood sporting goods store owner Rene Bussoz, who had just launched U.S. Divers, which became the largest diving equipment company in the world. Bussoz had acquired U.S. distribution rights to the Aqua Lung, and Anderson became the first authorized Aqua Lung repairman in the United States.

After graduating from the Sparling School of Deep Sea Diving in Wilmington in 1954, Anderson worked on numerous commercial diving projects on the West Coast.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, he played a significant role in developing several groundbreaking pieces of scuba equipment for the Los Angeles-based company Healthways and then for the giant Scubapro diving equipment company, said Kent Rockwell, associate editor of Historical Diver Magazine.

“One of the designs for the scuba regulator that he came up with in 1960 is used today by the majority of manufacturers in the diving industry,” said Rockwell.

In 1962, Anderson was one of two safety divers on Swiss scientist Hannes Keller’s world-record 1,020-foot open-ocean saturation dive in a bell off Catalina Island.

Because of a series of mishaps after reaching the ocean floor, Keller and Peter Small, the British journalist who accompanied him, passed out. The surface crew, watching on closed-circuit television, began raising the bell.

At 200 feet, it was discovered that the bell was losing pressure, so Anderson and fellow safety diver Chris Whittaker dived down to investigate. They found and closed all of the external valves and resurfaced, but instruments showed that the diving bell was still not maintaining pressure.

Although warned not to go down again, Anderson and Whittaker made a second dive, during which they discovered that the tip of Keller’s fin was stuck in the hatch, preventing a proper closure. Anderson cut the fin tip and the hatch closed. He remained with the bell and sent Whittaker, whose nose had been bleeding, to the surface. But Whittaker never made it and his body was never recovered. Small died later.

Anderson was praised by a Los Angeles coroner’s investigation panel, which concluded that “the selection of the safety diver, Richard Anderson, was justified and most fortunate. We feel Hannes Keller owes his life to the unusual ability and courage of this one man.”

Earlier, while working as an instructor and equipment technician for Diving Corp. of America in Florida, Anderson became the diving equipment technician in Nassau during the filming of Walt Disney’s 1954 movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

He later worked on numerous other films, including serving as a dive master for the underwater unit on the 1987 movie “Jaws: the Revenge,” and did underwater work on the television series “Baywatch” in the 1990s.

Anderson also made half a dozen humorous underwater movies, including “Gold From the Winfield Scott,” a treasure-diving film that won the Film of the Year award at the 1970 International Underwater Film Festival.

He was editor of Dive magazine in the early 1960s and wrote more than 100 articles on diving for Dive, Skin Diver, Argosy, Life and other magazines. He also wrote a book, “Diving and Dredging for Gold,” in 1994.

“Dick Anderson was a unique treasure to both professional and sports divers,” astronaut Scott Carpenter, Anderson’s former brother-in-law, said in a statement Saturday. “His films, writing, stories and marvelous sense of humor made a lasting impression on me and everyone else who was fortunate enough to know him.”

Anderson was born on Sept. 26, 1932, in Portland, Ore., and spent his much of his childhood living with a foster family. A high school dropout who ran away from home at 15, he held a variety of jobs, including doing carpentry and working on a dairy farm in Oregon and as a longshoreman in Alaska.

“He was always running away, but running away for adventure,” said Bridget Anderson, the daughter of film pioneer Hal Roach.

“When I met him, being raised in Beverly Hills and dating actors and lawyers, I felt like I had met Indiana Jones,” she said. “I couldn’t believe a person like this existed. He was truly the most charismatic man.”

When they met in 1975, Anderson had just returned from the Bahamas, where he was operations manager in an effort to recover treasure on the Nuestra Senora de las Maravillas, a Spanish galleon that had sunk off the Bahamas in 1656 and is considered one of the greatest treasure ships of all time.

In 1987, he was arrested by an undercover customs agent, who seized a set of emerald-and-gold jewelry belonging to Anderson. He had been telling potential buyers that he had recovered the emeralds from a wrecked galleon on a Panamanian reef.

According to a 2005 story in the New Yorker that cited documents filed in the Central District Court in Los Angeles, Anderson’s defense was that he had bought the emeralds in Florida in 1975 from an unnamed individual. He claimed that he’d made up the story about the Panamanian wreck to enhance their value.

Lee Arian, then an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, told the New Yorker that, although there was concern that “the emeralds were taken out of international waters without appropriate permits,” the smuggling charge could not be proved.

According to the settlement agreement, Anderson kept all but a pair of earrings, which were acquired by a third party and eventually returned to Anderson.

Asked by the magazine why Anderson had been allowed to keep any part of the emerald set, Arian said, “Anderson was an interesting guy, a fascinating guy. His story was fascinating. I remember thinking it was not entirely fair that this guy should, well, end up with nothing.... We did what we felt was legitimately fair under the circumstance.”

Arian added, “He seemed like a good guy. He didn’t seem like anyone we had to be too concerned about.”

In addition to his wife of 30 years, Anderson is survived by his daughters, Julie Lyon, Brooke Anderson and Erin Anderson; his brother, Eugene Anderson; and two grandchildren.