Judith Hemenway
As a very young child, Judy was afraid of the water, until the fateful day that her father picked her up and threw her, water-wings and all, into the deep end of the pool. She immediately realized that she had found her true element, and hasn't come out of the water since, except grudgingly to earn enough money to support her habit.

She grew up in the farmlands of Pennsylvania with the inspiration of Hollywood classics such as Flipper, Sea Hunt and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and began diving in 1973, shortly after she moved to Southern California and met her soon-to-be husband. She is delighted to have the publication of her book, The Universe Next Door, mark the 30th anniversary of her diving certification. During that time, she has logged approximately 1,000 dives, mostly in California, although she has also had the privilege of diving in such exotic locations as Fiji, Borneo, and Papua New Guinea.

During the week, Judy maintains a career as a network security engineer. (Naturally — what else would you do if you had a Master's degree in Cognitive Psychology?) In this disguise, she has authored a number of exciting technical papers such as "The Architecture of a Distributed Trusted Computing Base" and "Applying the Abadi-Lamport Composition Theorem in Real-World System Integration Environments." These, of course, have not exactly been best sellers. She hopes her new book will do somewhat better.

She currently resides in Del Mar, California with her husband, their German Shepherd, a pond full of koi and goldfish, and 32 rose bushes.

"What drew me beneath the surface at first was the excitement and adventure of exploring the other three-fourths of our planet, and over the years I have had many memorable adventures there. But in addition to the adventure, what keeps me returning is the privilege of experiencing myself as an alien in another universe, exploring and developing what lies within. As Marcel Proust said 'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.'"

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