Heyward Mathews received his Bachelor’s in Zoology from the University of Georgia, a Masters Degree from Florida State University in Oceanography, and a Doctorate in College Education from Nova University.

He spent a year as a Fishery Biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tagging Menhaden.  In 1967 Heyward came to St. Petersburg College’s Clearwater Campus teaching Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology, Oceanography, and Scuba.

In 1972 a grant from the Florida Park Service and supervised a crew of his former SPC marine biology students to build a scrap tire artificial reef 3 miles West of Clearwater Beach.

Later he worked with the Pinellas County Commission to start a county reef program that has built artificial reefs since 1974.

In the late 1970’s Dr. Mathews was the founder and first President of the Clearwater Marine Science Center which later became the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

In 2019 Heyward designed and built the countries first Underwater Veterans Memorial exclusively for divers,

the “Circle of Heroes.” 

Dr. Mathews has been a scuba diver since 1957 and a scuba instructor since 1973, having certified over 1700 divers, in both private classes and college classes taking the form of both open water and advanced open water training.