Mark Cunningham
LEGENDARY LIFEGUARD

Forget Hasselhoff. After 29 years as a lifeguard—18 of them at Banzai Pipeline—51-year-old Cunningham is it. On the North Shore, lifeguards watch the beach, patrol on jet skis and ATVs, work the crowd, and then spend a couple of hours taking turns surfing as part of "in-service training." Besides saving lives, you've got to stay fit. "It's a job requirement and a survival requirement," says Cunningham. Though he recently retired from the Honolulu guard service, Cunningham still serves as a private guard on the Hawaiian Water Patrol, providing safety for Hollywood productions and surf contests: "I'm sort of like a rodeo clown for the pros; I make sure they come up after every wipeout."

ADVICE? "Be a damn good swimmer and know about surfing, jet skiing, tow-in surfing, canoe paddling, diving, and fishing. You're in that environment 40 hours a week minimum, and all of those things are going to come across your beach."
—MARK ANDERS

Griff Alker
SURF-YACHT CAPTAIN

While you're reading this, he's probably tooling leisurely around someplace like the Mentawai Islands, off Sumatra, on the Pelagic, a million-dollar, 65-foot custom surf yacht, pausing now and then to catch a few waves. As captain of said yacht, Alker spends up to 70 days a year guiding Pelagic Surf Charters clients to the best breakers in Indonesia. And if he's not at the helm or dealing with the logistics of the operation, the 43-year-old is probably deep-sea fishing or surfing with clients. "I own the boat, so I'm always working," he says. "But physically working? Four or five hours a day would be a lot." The 15-hour workdays come with the off-season, October to February, when Alker shuttles between his home, in Solana Beach, California, and Phuket, Thailand, where he oversees maintenance on the boat. In 2005, Alker and business partner John Musser bought a 125-foot decommissioned crabbing vessel and spent 18 months and millions of dollars retrofitting it for luxury surf charters off mainland Mexico. So now, in addition to the Indonesia trips, Alker is spending a couple of months a year captaining the newly christened Royal Pelagic way down south, where the waves and the cocktails are equally tasty.

ADVICE? "Don't do it for the money. It's a lifestyle. Do it because you love surfing and the ocean and making people happy."
—MARK ANDERS

Mark Angel
WHITEWATER SALVAGE DIVER

Mention Angel to those in the know and the room will go eerily silent. If you're looking for him, chances are something has gone terribly wrong. "People almost whisper his name," says Dorian Thompson, a fly-fishing guide in Bend, Oregon. "The guy's a legend." scuba gear and fought your way upstream through Class VI rapids, darting between rocks like a trout or working your way down submerged ladders, to retrieve what others have lost—be it a $22,000 Rolex, a driftboat, or a loved one. Over 35 years, the 63-year-old Angel, who plies his trade on the rivers of the Northwest, has seen boulders three feet thick float over his head, snapped the 14,000-pound-test ropes he uses when salvaging boats, and rarely come up empty-handed. He uses scuba gear from the sixties and seventies, he says, because newer equipment isn't right for the task, and, so he can always move freely, he never uses a safety line. "A normal scuba diver would be killed in the first few seconds," says Angel, who's been diving rivers since he was seven. "I was in my thirties before I realized no one else really did this." No wonder. Last summer, Angel dove into a notorious hole on Oregon's Deschutes River to find a drowned 17-year-old girl pinned below. The current drove him like a pylon into the bottom and cracked his right tibia, but he kept going. After a week, he was able to pull the girl out. He lost $60,000 worth of gear, including his jet boat, in the process. He charges $150 an hour and up, depending on the task, but he won't accept payment for missions like that; he's not doing it for the money.

ADVICE? "Unload your scuba knowledge. It's not necessary. What is necessary is being a very solid whitewater man. Not in rafts—they're too forgiving—but in driftboats and jet boats."
—TIM NEVILLE

John Chatterton & Richie Kohler
SCUBA HEROES

After their obsession with identifying the skeletal remains of a German U-boat sunk off the coast of New Jersey during World War II spawned Robert Kurson's 2004 bestseller Shadow Divers, Chatterton and Kohler quit their construction jobs and went subsurface full-time. As cohosts of the History Channel's Deep Sea Detectives, they explored Maya caves; Scotland's legendary Loch Ness; and the Everest of shipwrecks, the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956 off Nantucket. In 2005's Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces, they revealed their discovery of two previously unknown portions of the doomed ship. But that's all in the rearview mirror. Now the partners, 56 and 45, are creating more dive-mystery specials for the History Channel and PBS, as well as producing the DVD magazine Dive Portal. Recently, they went 400 feet down to the Britannic, sister ship of the Titanic. "The line keeps moving," says Kohler. "Where are we going to be in five years—600 feet? A thousand?" And, for the record, they want Meat Loaf and Danny DeVito to play them in the upcoming Shadow Divers movie.

ADVICE? Kohler: "There's a quote I love from a U-boat commander: 'Life is a matter of luck, and the odds in favor of success are in no way enhanced by extreme caution.' "
—ANTHONY CERRETANI

Brad Fitzpatrick
SEARCH-AND-RESCUE SWIMMER

Dangling on a wire suspended from a helicopter. During a storm at sea. In the middle of the night. To Fitzpatrick, that's what it's all about, because out there somewhere is someone who might be taking their last breath. "Your adrenaline is always rushing," says the 26-year-old ocean addict, a Miami-based Coast Guard rescue swimmer who spends a good chunk of his time looking for people lost in the great marine wilderness or stranded aboard sinking vessels. After Hurricane Katrina blew through New Orleans and left it half submerged, Fitzpatrick and his crew were especially busy, saving dozens of lives. He pursued this gnarly path after enlisting in the Coast Guard, where he applied for Aviation Survival Technician training, then passed the four-month Airman program, then was sent to rescue-swimmer school in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where he endured 17 weeks of relentless physical training. After that, it was off to work: "My first choice was Florida," he says. "I can hang out at the beach during the day and save people at night."

ADVICE? "Have your mind in the right place and be willing to give it your all every day."
—MARK ANDERS