Sundiver International, Inc. D/b/a Sundiver — Attraction in Long Beach

If you care about safety, do not dive with this operator.

I recently dove with Sundiver and experienced a serious safety incident caused by faulty rental gear and the captain’s improper repair. On our second dive, my buddy’s rental BCD completely malfunctioned at 40 ft — the corrugated hose disconnected from the BCD, leaving him with no buoyancy control. My buddy was sinking to the bottom, unable to add air at all. I had to drop his weights immediately, and we both made an emergency ascent and swim back to the boat.

Back on board, the captain showed no remorse and offered no apology for the danger caused by her equipment. Instead, she attempted another repair, still failing to properly align the hose connection — the same mistake that caused the malfunction in the first place. She then dismissed the incident as a “valuable learning experience” for my buddy, who had just completed his Open Water certification.

When I voiced my concern that diving with faulty equipment was unsafe, she refused to address me further. Instead, she turned to my shy buddy and told him it was his decision to continue, ignoring my point that his safety was directly tied to mine. When I repeated this, she brushed me off again.

I’ve dived with many operators across Southern California and never had a safety incident like this. The fact that the captain normalized such a dangerous failure and framed it as a positive experience is deeply alarming.

If you value your safety, please avoid...

I had a great dive experience with Kyaa and the Sundiver boat, with two trips to Catalina Island last Friday and Saturday. Kyaa and her deckhands, Mo and Taylor were helpful. Kyaa had good knowledge of the dive sites and gave good briefings. Safety was never a concern and I was satisfied with their roll call procedures. They were flexible with their dive sites and when conditions weren't perfect, they were happy to go to another dive site (fuel and time were not concerns to them). They truly went out of the way to make sure we had some great dives.

However, I did wish that they put more effort into their COVID-19 procedures. I had a chance to compare Sundiver with another popular dive boat company, Spectre/Cal Boat Diving, and the differences were huge. Although I understand that proper social distancing is not going to be implemented perfectly on a dive boat, even at half capacity, there were things they could have done to make sure things were more sanitary/safer. My largest concern was the food. Food was mostly not prepackaged, with chips, salad, cookies and trailmix presented in a bowl/plate and everyone dipping their fingers in (no public serving utentils were used.) The lunch spread was bread and deli meats/cheese, and again, there were no public serving utensils used. Plastic utensils were placed on the table, but no one (including crew members) used utensils to serve themselves, and the crew didn't say...

BEWARE PLEASE READ This dive charter is really something else. To say it is bad would be an understatement! The dive trips at the core are mediocre at best. To begin with the company, has been working on a suspended license since 2016(unpaid taxes). One of the "captains" kyaa heller is a powder keg, a time bomb of psychopathic rage! Ive been on a few of their dive trips now and seen on many occasions, her go from 0 to 10,000 in a snap of the fingers with other guests/customers over absolutely nothing. To the point were she is as red as a tomato and borderline foaming at the mouth. Also back in 2015 her negligence got a 45 year old mother of 2 killed after heller left her out in open water. For this heller had her merchant mariner credentials revoked by the coast guard in 2016. I have no idea how this woman can still be allowed to captain a vessel with her mental state and past record. The rest of the crew are chill normal people and like I stated in the beginning at the core, the trips are average run of the mill dive charter trips. kyaa heller turns a run of the mill trip into nightmare at sea very quickly. Avoid this dive company and go with pretty much any other dive company in the area if you're looking to avoid a day of...