Between 1954 and 1958 he operated a dive business in the Bahamas with a boat he had built especially for diving. In 1965, Waterman took his entire family to Tahiti, which launched their careers as television stars when National Geographic purchased the rights to air his film of that yearlong experience.
Waterman was associate producer and underwater cameraman on the classic shark film, Blue Water, White Death. He was co-director of underwater photography on The Deep, and has produced documentaries for ABC’s “Spirit of Adventure” series and the “Expedition Earth” series on ESPN. He and his oldest son won the first father and son Emmy for the National Geographic Explorer production, Dancing With Stingrays.