Six-year-old Clive Cussler stared wide-eyed at the placid blue Pacific Ocean. It was the boy’s first encounter with the Southern California shoreline since his family’s recent move from the frozen suburbs of Minneapolis. Stretching as far as he could see, the dazzling tableau of sand, water, and azure sky were interrupted only by the Huntington Beach Pier and a smudge of smoke trailing behind a haze-blurred liner.

Suddenly, as if commanded by an inner voice, Clive began to run towards the water. His parents, busy unpacking beach gear, looked up in astonishment. Clive’s mother, Amy, called after him, “Wait, Clive, wait!” But her son, his lanky legs churning like pistons, continued his mad dash across the sand. Splashing into the water, he was ambushed by a foaming breaker and dumped back onto the beach.

Undaunted, the youngster jumped up and charged back into the pounding surf. On his second attempt, Clive’s timing was better, and he soon found himself in over his head. Opening his eyes, Clive was transfixed by his first glimpse of the underwater world. Peering at several tiny fish darting across the sun-dappled bottom, he momentarily forgot he didn’t know how to swim. Suddenly, a large hand plunged through a froth of bubbles. Eric Cussler had sprinted into the water and after a few frantic thrusts, managed to grab his son’s arm and haul him back to the beach. A few days later, Amy enrolled Clive in swimming lessons.

That abbreviated dip in the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach marked the beginning of Clive Cussler’s life-long love of the sea. Growing up in Southern California he spent long, lazy days on the beach, body-surfing and swimming. Stationed in Hawaii during the Korean War, Clive and his air force buddies strapped on an aqualung when few amateurs would venture into the depths. During the late 1960s, Clive managed a dive shop for a year, an experience that expanded his knowledge of the underwater world and honed his diving skills.

The allure of the sea beckoned again when Clive slid behind a typewriter one night and dove into writing action adventure tales. Clive’s first novel’s action is set against a backdrop of the world’s oceans - mysterious, beautiful, unpredictable, uncharted, and treacherous. His hero, a marine engineer, works for the fictional National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), an oceanographic research organization. Little did he realize the “pot boiler,” as he called his first effort, would spawn a globally popular adventure series still going strong more than forty years later.

In 1979, Clive joined a select group of “aquanauts,” spending three days in Hydrolab, an underwater habitat on the sea floor, fifty feet below the surface near St. Croix. Providing Spartan accommodations for four divers, the habitat served as a research station from 1970 to 1985. “We dove in the morning, noon, and in the evening when it was dark,” Clive recalled. “I felt like a true denizen of the deep.”

The same year he visited Hydrolab, Clive elevated his fascination with the sea to a new level when he founded the real-life NUMA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving maritime and naval history. Funded primarily by Clive’s book sales, NUMA’s crew of dedicated marine experts and volunteers have discovered more than 100 significant underwater wrecks, including the Civil War submarine, H.L. Hunley.

Jacques Cousteau was the first explorer to provide the general public a glimpse into the underwater world. Educating and inspiring with his films and books, Cousteau was a staunch believer in marine conservation. Clive, through the adventures of eco-warrior Dirk Pitt and his associates, communicates the same message - the oceans are not a convenient dumping ground or an infinite source of food and energy. They are a priceless, fragile resource and it is crucial for all of us to understand how our activities affect the sea.

Today, Clive is the keystone of a publishing empire Forbes described as, “the literary equivalent of a theme park.” In addition to the flagship Dirk Pitt novels, co-written since 2004 with his son, he oversees four spinoff series, co-written with a team of outstanding authors. In the pages of his bestselling novels, Clive’s intrepid heroes fight injustice and punish those who would exploit and pollute the world’s oceans, while NUMA’s dedicated explorers continue to search for the mysteries hidden beneath their restless waves.

The seeds for Clive’s accomplishments may well have been planted on that brilliant summer day at Huntington Beach in 1937 when six-year-old Clive Cussler hit the water running. More than three-quarters of a century later, he is still diving headfirst into adventure.