Nerdy hot guys always turn us on. Nerdy hot guys who don wetsuits and look like Adam Nardelli turns us on even more. Our Man for July is like Clark Kent meets Super Gay Man, starting out as a young reporter in Long Island (he wrote for the “Long Islander”), then moving to Fort Lauderdale to learn all about scuba.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” says Adam, 29. “I was twenty four, dealing with coming out too.” Marine Science called, and Adam left for sunny South Florida, where he went back to school and got his Padi-License. “To be in this field you have to have a lot of versatility,” says Adam. “On my boat we’ve all done different things.” To that end, Adam has two more years to finish his thesis and every day to look like he just slipped into something more comfortable.

But be careful how you phrase it. Adam’s so down-home sweet I felt uncomfortable talking to him about dating and the single life (Yep, those fish in the sea haven’t found him yet), so I concentrated more on what he really loves—the dive. Even that got tough when he said “You’re encouraged to have a buddy, but with proper equipment you can do it alone.”

I breathed and got through it. “You can hit one hundred feet and get decent dives,” he continued. “I’ll just grab a tank and go off a beach and see what’s there. I’m a renegade.”

Adam, who’s dived all over the world and been circled by a shark or 30, even got introspective. “My life is dedicated to the ocean,” he says. “This is seriously my life. It’s really hard to date. I’m up at six-thirty or seven, have coffee and out the door.”

And we’re just coming up for air.

Photographs: Toby Harmer