It’s hard to imagine that a boy from the Midwest, who as a young teenager was afraid to put his face in the water has managed to log over 2,000 dives in the Gulf of Mexico in addition to traveling to exotic tropical locations like Hawaii and Cuba, and more recently joined an expedition with National Geographic for a memorable trip to the Yucatan. He has wrangled 12 foot octopi in Puget Sound, braved the cool waters of Lake Superior, ventured into the Indian Ocean off Kenya and even explored a volcano in Utah. Two years ago, while with a National Geographic team in Yucatan, he was part of the discovery of  very old Mayan skeletons in the jungle that was documented in the October 2003 publication. By April of 2005, Rusty was back on an 8-day excursion to the jungles of the Yucatan with Advanced Diver Magazine.

Rusty feels that the word “diversification” aptly describes Florida Gulf local diving. He has explored the underwater environs of the Cape Coral Bridge, the Sanibel Causeway (for fun and also for an NBC News Exclusive), the Philadelphia wreck just off Sonesta Resort, an archeological site off Fisherman’s Key, the docks at Boca Grande, manatees in the Caloosahatchee River and almost all of the passes between our barrier islands.

He has explored and photographed wrecks like the torpedoed Baja California, the freighters Fantastico and Roatan Express, which sits upright at 190 feet. In the summer of 2004 he was the second diver to enter a cave system that starts at 125 feet, single files through a 60 foot deep chimney, and opens into a room with a domed ceiling, under the Gulf floor that is 90 feet across, and where fresh water begins at 240 feet. The bottom has yet to be found even at a depth of 365 feet.

Rusty’s diving career is more goal oriented than it has been in the past. He says that his ideal dive is somewhere where no one else has ever been and his desire is to document and photograph new discoveries. If someone has been there before, he is in no hurry to get there.