Honolulu Scuba Company

[Cacia]

I heard a rumor he swung a weight belt at you, which was kinda dumb since you are 6"7" and all.

Wow...I would have paid money to see him taking swings at the *gentle giant* I would have beat him up myself but my mommy was there, he he.

I promise to post it, when I get home, since it is old news and all.

I do love a good fight, I hate to say.

I was always a little afraid of the subs and would often cross along the cable at the bottom which robbed me of time.

 

[goldenbear01]

As someone who's studying for the (CA) bar exam, I'm curious as to how the public trust doctrine in the HI constitution would impact the "ownership" of the YO and the San Pedro site (provided that the lands under the YO and the San Pedro and be and are privately owned). Additionally, does anyone know if there are any navigable water rights reserved to the public (e.g., the common law public trust doctrine) that can be asserted by divers against property rights claims by anyone who owns the land under the YO and the San Pedro?

Thanks!

 

[Shaka Doug]

After some initial problems with equalizing pressure and regulating my breathing, the dive went well except for the fact that I got hit in the back by a 30 foot tourist submarine. Neither the submarine nor I was injured and my buddy pulled me out of the way so that the encounter was terminated without further problems. But, those things are big (about 30 feet) and don't give you any warning of their presence - at least this one didn't!

It reads to me like it was more like you hitting the front of the sub with your back/tank. I can see it now, you're turtled and sinking, crushing your ears, not able to hear anything and falling backwards. The sub was below you and you came in from above. You didn't see it because you were facing upwards and trying to equalize. The ears won't go and it really dampens your hearing. I've seen hundreds of divers do this and crash into all kinds of stuff, but never a submarine!! Unskilled divers frequently forget to maintain a 'flying' position, get into trouble, lose focus of what they're doing and crash into the bottom.

If you were practicing good bouyancy skills and positioning, and equalizing without trouble, then you would have been able to avoid the sub coming your way. It would have been pretty obvious that it was there and you should have been aware of it and been able to manuever yourself out of it's path. Hey, don't the subs have some kind of horn? Like a sub duck or something?

You're very lucky that your impact was light. What if you had damaged a critical part of the submarine or your equipment? It wouldn't be too cool to get chopped up like that fish either! Whew!

Thanks for sharing your story. Hopefully more people will become sub savvy now. We have one here in Maui and I've dove along side the one in St. Thomas, USVI a bunch of times. Always could hear that thing from a long ways away.

 

[MacWet]

Hi Goldenbear01:

Your questions about the rights of the public to use areas around the YO and the San Pedro are right on. I wouldn't claim the sub was asserting a superior right or, for that matter, any right except its right to use the waters in common with others. The guy who told me and the other divers that the subs have the right of way was a divemaster aboard the Honolulu Scuba Co. boat and he didn't relate the source of his information. I thought it was a suspect statement at the time he made it. Maybe he meant that we should give subs the right of way and I'd certainly agree with that.

Good luck with the CA bar exam. I took the Illinois bar exam in 1966 and practice in the Chicago metropolitan area as well as the U.S. District Court. My diving adventures have been limited to Belize and O'ahu but I intend to try Haight Quarry (near Bourbonnais) and Lake Michigan soon.

MacWet

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Atlantis Submarines bought those ships, spent the money to clean them up to EPA standards and put them on the bottom as attractions for their sub tours. In order to do that, they had to get a nonexclusive lease of submerged lands from the State.

There is also a designated submarine operations area, which has specific safety procedures, including not swimming towards the sub and not dropping anchor. The normal schedule of the dive boats typically has divers there when the sub is not. My best sub encounter on those wrecks was on a deep/deep day where that dive was the second (after Sea Tiger).

 

[Black_3000psi]

Well look on the bright side, you servived a collision with a sub, you didnt get arrested, and you have given us some great new material for predive boat chat.I was wondering ,did anyone get a pic of you and the sub mating? I'll let someone else ask the more obvious questions like where was your dive leader at.