Kane Hodder, who plays Jason Vorhees in several Friday the 13th movies was the stunt coordinator for this film.
This film was first released in January 1989 as the first of four underwater creature movies which included Leviathan (1989), The Abyss (1989), and Lords of the Deep (1989).
Writer Lewis Abernathy sold his script at the same time that friend James Cameron was working on his own "underwater monster saga". Despite Cameron's asking that he delay this movie to avoid competing with The Abyss (1989), Abernathy went ahead and was thereby deemed persona non grata with Cameron and associates until they patched together their friendship when Abernathy accompanied Cameron on the September 1995 filming of the wreck of the Titanic for Titanic (1997) (but not any actual dives to the wreck itself).
DeepStar Six (1989) was the first release of several underwater-monster-themed feature films released during 1989-90, including The Abyss (1989), Leviathan (1989), The Evil Below (1989), and Lords of the Deep (1989), and The Rift (1990). With the exception of The Abyss (1989), none of these films were box office hits.
Originally, Robert Harmon was going to direct the film. However, when he left, Sean S. Cunningham stepped in to direct the film with a budget of $8,000,000.