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National Geographic hails Tucker

Legend: Teddy Tucker, right, and The Deep author Peter Benchley pictured together on the Bermudian explorer’s dive boat Miss Wendy

Diving legend and ocean scientist Teddy Tucker, who died on June 9 at the age of 88, has been heralded as “the voice of the Sargasso Sea” by the nature publication National Geographic.

Mr Tucker was closely associated with the National Geographic Society and its magazine, which regularly featured his discoveries.

A team from the organisation was preparing for another expedition with Mr Tucker at the time of his passing.

The article by David Doubilet recalls an expedition in July 2013 in which Mr Tucker led the team out to from his Kings Point, Sandys home to dive at Challenger Banks.

It extols him as “a living legend” and “master storyteller” — and lists his various titles as “salvage diver, treasure diver, marine archaeologist and historian, artist, fisherman-naturalist-conservationist and explorer”.

Mr Tucker was a founding member of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, as well as the Beebe Project, which used submersibles to explore deep-sea life.

That initiative was named another world-famous diver, the US naturalist William Beebe — who in the 1930s become the first person, along with engineer Otis Barton, to observe the creatures of the deep in bathysphere descents off Nonsuch Island.

The National Geographic article features pictures of Mr Tucker, as well as his discovery, the six-gilled shark, in the depths of the Bermuda Rise, and flying fish in the night seas off the Island.

The article on the Sargasso Sea, which is still in progress, is set to appear in “an upcoming issue”, according to the magazine.