I read wanting to "buy in" to a dive shop as different from wanting to buy and run one. There's no shortage of dive shops here, but I question whether any of them want/need the capital infusion/control headaches an investing partner would bring to the table. Of course, one major operator, Ocean Concepts, just went belly-up...so extra capital is not outside the realm of necessity. But is that really what you're looking to buy, a business on its last legs?
From what little I've seen, the only real utility for extra capital at most HI operations would be tech-friendly facilities/gear like rental doubles/stages, high pressure capable compressors, and real gas blending capabilities -- all of which are utterly lacking here, despite a few shops' efforts in that direction. However, there's not much market for that stuff because there's precious little worth doing tech diving for in Hawaii. Aside from a few around 200', most wrecks are either way outside divable range or within 120', and I'm not aware of any real cave systems to speak of here aside from the various Oahu karsts that seem to be pretty much unexplored.
Maybe some operations could do more/better business if they had a boat of their own/better or more boats...but in general I think that kind of need would not be enough to justify the issues caused by adding a major investor.
