Captain Bill, age 66, thinks New York City has the best diving in the world: just get on the subway, jump on the boat, go diving, and be back home in time to go out with the wife for dinner.

I first started diving right here in Sheepshead Bay, for coins. People used to throw money in the water and we used to fetch for it, back in the 40's. No mask, we just dove down and caught the coins, as they were floating down. We were all poor kids, and that's how we made some money. When we were kids down here, the only thing you wore in the summertime was a bathing suit. You were always in the water.

In Sheepshead Bay, you progressed from that to working the boat yards, where you scooped out boats, put outboard motors on the boats, took care of bait, whatever. Then you graduated from that to the fishing boats, where you worked as a mate, and if you were a decent swimmer, then you became a lifeguard, which is what I did. I lied about my age; I was about 15 and you were supposed to be 16. At the time I was a championship swimmer, I won a scholarship to St. Francis Prep, but I failed latin and algebra, so I wound up in Aviation High School.

And then from that, I went to the Marines, and I became a Naval Aviation Water Survival instructor. My job was training the flight crews and pilots how to stay alive when they ditched into the sea.

And then I joined the Police Department, and God was good: they started an underwater recovery team, and I got transferred out of Bedford Stuyvesant to the diving unit, where I would train the guys who did the rescues, and I stood there for 19 1/2 years. Police diving is great because every day is different. Plus, it was nice: you had a boat, you had a helicopter, you had a truck, and we dove every day of the week, almost. It was very, very exciting. And then, when they gave me the extra money, for being a training officer, it was even nicer!

The only time I've ever been seasick is when I was 11, when I was working on a fishing boat called the Sea Pigeon. This old timer that came on the boat, well, once a week he brought some home made wine, so I had some of that, and then we crossed the street to Sam's Clam Bar and we had some raw clams. And then the captain comes running over and he says the night mate can't come in, can you come out tonight? Well, when you're a hungry kid, you say, "Sure"! It was so rough that night, they put a belt around me and around the railing, so I wouldn't get washed over, and I'm up in the bow, throwing chum in the water, which is ground-up fish, and finally I got really sick. But that was the only time.