But they say necessity is the mother of invention, and the company he would go on to create was certainly born out of necessity.

Anderson was a single father— he needed to earn money, and quickly, so he started hiring out his underwater services fixing swimming pools, using the novel idea of working in a pool full of water.

It wasn't as farfetched as it sounds. He has built things underwater for the Aquarium, like the time he constructed something to hold the sensoring equipment and computers. So the new business was actually an extension of those skills and filled a need not being met by standard pool-repair technicians.

"I've been working continuously since the minute I came up with the idea," says Anderson.

If it sounds a bit unusual to be doing underwater swimming pool repairs, it is. Anderson's Scuba Pool Repair is the only business of its kind— it eliminates the need for draining and refilling the pool before repairs can be made.

In a stroke of good luck for the business, it was during the height of the drought years that Anderson began the venture, and conservation weighed heavily on people's minds.

The business was built slowly; he bought one piece of equipment at a time rather than borrowing money. This process allowed for slow, controlled growth, "sometimes painfully slow," he admits. But he believed in the vision of the company. In addition, "[I was] fearful of having investors in my back pocket and I didn't want others making decisions for me."

The business is satisfying for Anderson on many fronts. "I like the blue-collar expression of my marine biology education," he says.

Anderson graduated with a degree in marine biology from UC­Santa Cruz and served an internship at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He was hired by the Aquarium right out of college and worked there for the next seven years.

He'd always been attracted to the water; he swam on his high school team in Alameda and in college with the Santa Cruz Masters Swimming. Even now, in spite of being in the water every day as part of his job, he also surfs whenever he can. "I spend an awful lot of time in the water," he admits.

It's not surprising that Anderson's 18-year-old son is quite a swimmer, too. In fact, his father has underwater video of him at age 3 collecting keys off the bottom of the pool. In addition, he helps out with the business.

Anderson averages about three hours a day underwater for his job but has gone up to five. Even with a drysuit (a wet suit is actually used in summer), winter water temperatures make for cold conditions. It can be grueling work and is not quite as glamorous as it might sound. In February, when it's the coldest, he may have three pools to do. "I'll get out singing soprano," he says, "get dressed and go on to the next job."

Anderson recently returned from Los Angeles, where he put a viewing pane into a Beverly Hills swimming pool for a cartoonist who works on Rugrats.

Besides the swimming pool work, he still works for the Monterey Bay Aquarium on a contractual basis, as well as for others like the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut. This work keeps him in touch with his roots and allows him to see remarkable rays, turtles, sharks and just about every fish known to man. "They generally leave you alone, but if I'm in an exhibit with a cheeky shark, I'll have a safety diver," he says.

In contrast to the philosophy of some parks, Anderson's philosophy and practice is that he never interacts with nature. "There's a strict protocol not to touch the animals. I believe the exhibits are an artistic expression of nature," he says.

Just recently he received a call from the city of Dubai on the Persian Gulf in the United Arab Emirates concerning a huge aquarium project.

There has been a surge in the popularity of water resorts, giving Anderson steady business.

"For the last 15 years they've been using water as a marketing focal point," he says.

Many seek his expertise before projects are undertaken as a precautionary measure. It helps knowing what works and, sometimes even more important, where things fail.

For most routine jobs, there are no unseen safety issues. It's in commercial diving that things can get a little dicey. What's unsettling, says Anderson, is doing a penetration dive into a pipe. Once in the pipe, it's not easy to jet up to the surface— a diver must crawl out first, and that can be intense.

The zero visibility takes getting used to as well. He remembers one instance in particular that was a bit frightening. He was doing a salvage job in the Berkeley marina and had to dive into the cabin of a submerged vessel to seal the portholes. At one point, the boat owner's leather jacket was suspended in the water and draped itself over Anderson's helmet. It made moving around difficult, so he reached up and felt this slimy, sopping wet, heavy coat wrapped around his head. After struggling with a momentary feeling of panic, he had a good laugh about it.

"You are aware of everything," says Anderson, "senses are so acute."

Obviously his work on water-theme parks and aquariums wearing scuba gear isn't unusual, but it's the swimming-pool work that gets a few raised eyebrows.

Sometimes the idea of repairing things underwater is met with skepticism. "At first it was a real conceptual battle," he says. "The oldtimers would say, 'you can't do that underwater.' If I had a nickel for every time they said that, I'd be rich."

One of the problems with pool repairs is that homeowners don't always see the necessity for the work. Money is not being spent for something aesthetic or something they can enjoy. Instead it's something they frequently can't see but that often is a safety issue. Pool problems are frequently out of sight, out of mind and have the potential to worsen before someone is called in for repairs.

Some of the more common repairs include fixing cracks, repairing the main drain, removing corroding rebar— the corroding rebar causes ugly rust spots— from the bottom of the pool and even repairing tiles underwater.

In order to do his work in conditions not normally advantageous for these repairs, he modifies products. For instance, he manufactures an underwater plaster to use when repairing tiles in water.

Many homeowners really get into the whole experience— sometimes even pulling up lawn chairs, bringing out the kids and even enjoying a picnic lunch while they watch the scuba man.

There are many reasons not to drain a pool, wasting a tremendous amount of water being one. In a backyard swimming pool this can amount to 40,000 gallons of water. "There's a finite amount of drinkable water," says Mike DiMarco, spokesman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

And draining the pool isn't as easy as it sounds. It can't be drained onto the street until it's tested for chemicals; otherwise, it could kill aquatic life, says Lindsey Wolf, public information officer for the city of San Jose's Environmental Services Department. This is because swimming-pool water contains chlorine and copper-based algaecides. Homeowners can be ticketed if caught discharging the water without testing it first.

And then there is the time commitment it takes to drain and refill a pool. Many apartment complexes, for instance, don't want their pools out of commission for too long or the residents start complaining. "I'm in and out of there by lunch," says Anderson.

Obviously for larger pools these issues are even more pronounced. Anderson's most recent job found him doing some minor repairs in the water of the Lynbrook High School pool, complete with scuba gear and wet suit. At Lynbrook, for instance, it would take several days to drain the pool and almost four days to fill it again, says Carl Dunn, maintenance, operations and transportation coordinator for the Fremont Union High School District— not to mention the total waste of water.

In addition, there is a remote possibility that the pool would "pop up," says Dunn, which happens when a pool is no longer being held in place by the weight of the water. For that reason the district prefers the scuba method and has been using it for about 10 years.

It may look rather unusual to find a diver in full scuba gear submerged in a high school or backyard swimming pool. But for Drew Anderson, it's all in a day's work.