Sea Hunt
American television series
Sea Hunt is an American action-adventure television series that aired in syndication from 1958 to 1961 and was popular for decades afterwards. The series originally aired for four seasons, with 155 episodes produced. It stars Lloyd Bridges as former Navy diver Mike Nelson, and was produced by Ivan Tors.
Development
Series executive producer Ivan Tors conceived the idea for Sea Hunt while working on the 1958 film Underwater Warrior. He tried in vain to sell the series to all three major networks, but they passed on it because they felt that a series set underwater could not be sustained. Tors then decided to sell it into the first-run syndication market. He teamed up with Ziv Television Programs and was able to sell it to more than 100 syndicated markets before it debuted in January 1958.
Lloyd Bridges was cast as lead character Mike Nelson. Sea Hunt was intended as a comeback vehicle for Bridges due to his brief black-listing from acting. He was restricted from mainstream Hollywood roles after admitting to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a member of the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, a group that was tied to the Communist Party.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sea Hunt” is american television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hunt, American and television, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american television series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q319191. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1958 and 1961.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Sea Hunt”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Sea Hunt primary sources, Sea Hunt archive and Hunt research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Sea Hunt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.