Stephen Etchemendy

1949 - 2022

Stephen Anthony Etchemendy was born on December 9th, 1949 to Leon and Ruby Etchemendy of Reno, Nevada. Steve died at the age of 73, on December 24, 2022, at his home in Pebble Beach, California. Steve attended the University of Washington in Seattle on an Army ROTC scholarship, where he studied oceanography and geology, graduating in 1972. Before being posted to the army base in Butzbach, Germany, Steve married his UW classmate Bonnie Linn. Their twin children, John and Crystal, were born in Germany a few years later. After six years of service in the Army, Steve went to work for Oceaneering Inc., a major oil field services supplier in the Gulf of Mexico. Steve started as a diver and welder and moved on to crewed vehicles. Steve set two world records for deepest solo working dives in both a JIM suit and as a pilot of the WASP submersible. Steve left Oceaneering in the early 1980s for Deep Ocean Engineering/Technology as vice president and operations manager. In 1987 Steve joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, serving for several years as one of its pilots of the 23-foot submarine Alvin, making numerous scientific dives in the Atlantic and Pacific. In 1989, Steve joined the newly formed Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and served as its director of marine operations for 28 years. His group was responsible for all of the research vessels – ships, ROVs, and other scientific equipment – and one scientist described him as having "a rock-solid sense of what it took to build some device that would actually operate and survive in the ocean," on which MBARI relied throughout his tenure there. In 1994 he married his wife, Carole. His personal time was always active and often exotic, from river rafting to sailing in the Caribbean and the South Pacific, to hiking and biking in Yosemite and other wonders of nature. He even raced cars with his uncle at Sears Point Raceway and Laguna Seca. Steve is survived by his loving wife of 29 years, Carole; his children, John (Teresa Wriston) and Crystal (John Batcabe); his stepdaughters Nicki and Tina Ladd; his granddaughters Ibaia and Maite Batcabe; brothers John (Nancy) and Mike (Kristine Vey); sister Jonrie (Angel Dávila); and numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends.