What Happened to 'Shark Week' Stan Waterman’s Eye?

It's the most wonderful time of the year! No this is not a Christmas in July joke. It's Shark Week baby!

For those who are a little behind the times, Shark Week is a week on the Discovery Channel devoted entirely to, you guessed it, sharks! And if you think you don't care about sharks, trust us when we say the programming is always amazing and they will suck you in... figuratively speaking of course.

Famous scuba diver Stan Waterman has been a staple of Shark Week since basically its existence. And if you are a fan of Shark Week and don't think you know who he is, yes you do. He's the guy who famously wears the eye patch. He's kind of known for it. And naturally, people are wanting to know what happened to his eye.

Here's what we could find out.

Stan Waterman is a renowned scuba diver and cinematographer known for his amazing underwater footage. His films have even won five Emmy awards. Stan was also the subject of Discovery Channel's The Man Who Loves Sharks. He took his last dive on the Cayman Islands at the age of 90 and recently had his 100 birthday.

But what Stan is most known for these days is his eye patch. So what happened?

Well, we hate to break it to you, but Stan has been pretty quiet about his eye injury and we weren't able to find much out about it. Freshers Live reports that the injury was sustained during a diving accident, although we were not able to find any more information about this.

Stan was interviewed on Talking Scuba by Bob Shoemakers back in 2011, and while we didn't hear where he mentioned the eye injury, he did talk about his eye patch. Stan said that his daughter actually gives him new eye patches every Christmas and even paints them. Stan explains that he has, "Octopus and sharks and fish and she has a raunchy sense of humor, all my kids do, and this last one that she did for me, she painted a pair of hooters on it. They look kind a little like eyes looking at each other." Stans adds that he doesn't, "wear that out in public very much."

While we aren't certain what happened to Stan's eye, it would be safe to assume that it probably happened while diving. And it's even more fun to assume that it involved a shark or sting ray, or even a shark AND a stingray. But who knows, he could have accidentally just poked himself. And maybe that's why Stan never said anything, because the intrigue is better than the reality.

Make sure to catch Shark Week beginning July 23 on Discovery Channel.