Divers charged $20 each to go to Mary's Place

[Mike]

But he said for the shark dive where he spent alot of $$ for a 35-40 minute dive, the OP kept trying to give them tanks with only 2000psi. He said they all complained and only then did the dive OP top them up.

There are a lot of rah rah reports about doing the shark dive with Waihuka divers. We aborted our dive with them at the last moment in 2009. When we arrived, it was a cattle operation with at least 30-40 divers there, lots of people of all levels from experienced to sh*tting their wetsuits, a big cattle call into a room where someone walks in and flicks on a video and walks out, we were told the current was absolutely ripping and much emphasis was given about the issues of the current and line holding and not letting go etc... when we got on the boat we had no tanks, 30-40 divers of all levels scurrying over each other to set up gear, we waited for 15 minutes still no tanks, then they couldn't get the boat motor started, shifted everyone over to some old rotted wooden dug out with wooden planks for seats no sun cover, blistering hot day, single outboard, 30-40 people of all levels scurrying all over this thing with tanks being thrown onto the bottom, apparently the idea was for everybody once over the dive site to gear up while shoulder to shoulder .... enough was enough and all 4 of us looked at each other at the same time and thumbed the whole thing and left.

When I was just there this year two divers from our resort went and reported back that only 2 sharks showed up. They did say they got a refund.

Them giving somebody 2000psi tanks for a 70ft dive doesn't surprise me at this point.

 

[Doc]

better than when we were in AKR and they didn't do Mary's Place due to the spike in fuel price at that time. But they were able to go to AKR's private beach off the airport. Not sure why they didn't kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

AKR quite likely abides by the Mary's Place Use Agreement and can use the mooring (the only alternative) at specific times during the week.

Many inferior dive ops will just show-up and dump their divers off of a "live boat" or grab the mooring when they should not be there.

Can't say for sure in your case, but I would count on AKR (and a precious few others) to abide by the rules... maybe that's why you couldn't access MP, even from the nearby (private?) beach.