Richard was born on Sept. 26, 1932 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He grew up in Santa Monica, CA and began skin diving and spear fishing in his early teens. Anderson graduated from the Sparling School of Deep Sea Diving in Wilmington, California in 1954. He became close friends with the School’s founder, Master Diver E.R. Cross. Anderson was a Safety Diver on the early deep submersible Submaray, owned and operated by Mart Toggweiler. A strong asset of Dick Anderson has been his insight in designing and building advanced new diving equipment. He went to work for Healthways, primarily in the technical aspects of design and production. He adapted the O-ring from the medical field into diving. Anderson integrated it into the first stage O-ring on the diving regulators at Healthways.
His long experience and engineering background were ideal in 1971 when he became Director of Research and Deveopment for White Stag, an early full-line diving manufacturing company. He has written numerous articles about diving, submersibles, undersea life and the lighter side of ocean technology. Anderson has also written many informative articles on diving personalities and how diving equipment is made. Anderson was Editor of Dive Magazine during the early 1960s. One of his specialties has been underwater photography. This led Anderson into underwater cinematography. Possibly the funniest underwater films ever produced are by Dick Anderson, including Mack The Diving Dog (a springer spaniel who dives for abalone shells), River Gold (spoof on divers pulling up huge gold nuggets from the Yuba River in California), Gold From The Windfield Scott (fooling divers with gold coins on a Californian shipwreck). His lectures, films and articles all bring a viewpoint of diving that can only come from the unique mind of Dick Anderson. He has put diving into an entirely new prospective, one that thousands enjoy. Honoured Photographer Award at the International Underwater Film Festival (1970); NOGI Award for Arts from the Underwater Society of America (1970); and others.