Kona Dive Report/ Dive Makai

[cuddlefish]

Kimberly,

I'm afraid you've opened yourself up to this. Of course every story has two sides...but if you bring that point up, you will have people expecting to hear the other side. You lucked out in buying a dive shop that has a clientele built up over many decades. But those people are tried and true fans of Tom and Lisa...there's no way around that. To say anything even slightly negative about them is going to get a response that is not positive for the "new" Dive Makai. You might just want to focus on telling what you are trying to do to serve your current customers in the best way you can...

 

[wader]

While I admit I know nothing of the old Dive Makai or the situation of the purchase of the company, I can only comment that I felt welcome and had a great time with them. I was treated with respect and allowed to dive my own profile while under a watchful eye should something occur. (which didn't thankfully).

I am quite sure there are many business dealings that may or may not have gone awry over the years between two sides. I look at it as what it does for me. If someone has feelings towards the former, I respect that, however SB is not the place.

As for Kimberly, please tell Andy I never received my pics and that was very disappointing as I did not take my camera with as he said he had his and would share photos.

 

[Keith B]

I too would like to hear the other side of the story.

In what unprofessional manner has the other side been conducting themselves? Any light that can be shed on this would be great.

Keith B.

 

[scuba_drum]

Might I get back, somewhat, to the original thread and ask what a blackwater dive is? Never heard of it, and I googled Dive Makai and the website appears to be down. I looked at the facebook page quickly but did not see where any info about blackwater diving was...

 

[smellzlikefish]

If there is any kind of court proceedings underway, it is extremely unprofessional to be talking about it at all. Kimberly is right to be keeping it to herself, at least until the legal BS is over. If you're not directly involved, you don't have to know about it until the courts make a ruling.

Kona is my favorite Hawaiian diving island, and that blackwater dive is my favorite Kona dive! I'm pretty good at identifying even the obscure Hawaiian reef critters, but I didn't even know where to begin identifying a lot of the critters I saw out there! Even the experts know little about the gelatinous life-forms of the world because they are so hard/expensive to collect. I really felt like I was doing something special out there!

 

[smellzlikefish]

FYI-Blackwater diving is a night dive in pelagic water. The idea is you get to observe the vertical migration of plankton and associated predators that every marine biologist has heard so much about.

 

[scuba_drum]

So you just night dive in deep water? Sounds pretty cool, but also I would imagine a bit unnerving, lol. Do you use more lights than normal or do you just take your normal hand-held light?

 

[WetBoy101]

You are each tethered to your own line around the boat (about 60 feet in length) Since you are in 2000 to 3000 feet of water, in the dark (so to speak) you don't want to have to worry about how deep you are or where you are drifting to. So basically you are dangling like shark bait looking for these creatures with a dive light. Our instructors were moving untethered from diver to diver checking up on everyone and helping us spot more critters!! It was pretty cool, however I much prefer night reef dives...

 

[Tom Winters]

This thread was kinda interesting. I dived with Dive Makai sometime around 1984, and while I was talking with Lisa, I realized that we had both lived in the same small crap town in Connecticut. Then I found out that she used to live on the next street over, although she was older and I never knew her. I used to get into fights all the time with her punkass little brother. Her dad was the local Fuller Brush door-to-door salesman - a real nice guy. She left that ratty little town as soon as she could, and so did I. The punkass little snot became a bigshot Boston banker.

Chris Newbert pioneered those deep dives into the abyss. He would go offshore Kona, go down 200' by himself, and wait in the dark to see who showed up. I couldn't do that, but then again, I never did anything remotely as great as his terrific book Within a Rainbow Sea.

Too bad about Dive Makai.

 

[smellzlikefish]

The thing about those blackwater dives is you don't see much at 200' that you don't see at the tethered 50'. It might seem deep, but in pelagic water, 200' is nothing. What town in CT, Tom?