Page 50: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2013)

Innovator In the early days of subsea technology, there were a number of pioneers: men and women who stepped over the edge of what we knew about the underwater world. These individuals left the comfort of solid ground to ex- plore beneath the waves and report back to the rest of us what they had seen. They pushed boundaries, raised the stakes and in some instances opened our minds to the possibilities. They were subsea visionaries. Today, those boundaries continue to be pushed, and undersea technology, now more than ever, is reaching new heights. The pioneering spirit has never been better represented than in the father and son team of Donald and Jesse Rodocker, founders of SeaBotix Inc. LLC. Don began his career as one of the early pioneers in the diving industry. His cutting edge designs in dive equipment, hyper- baric support systems and remotely operated vehicles laid the groundwork for many of the systems we see operating in the Þ eld today. His son, Jesse, has also had an impressive career working on high proÞ le projects such as the search for Amelia Earhart, counter mining measures for WWI and WWII seam- ines in the Baltic Sea and the archaeological investigation of a WWII Japanese midget sub. MTR recently sat down with Don Rodocker to not only get a glimpse into the origins and history that led up to the creation of SeaBotix, Inc., but to also visit, if just for a moment, that golden age of subsea technology. Don Rodocker  e Man in the Sea March 2013 50 MTRMTR #2 (50-65).indd 50MTR #2 (50-65).indd 503/6/2013 2:22:27 PM3/6/2013 2:22:27 PM