Dive Oahu, Inc. — Local services in Honolulu

I will do my best to provide an objective review and even wrote the owner, Brian, prior but go not response even after being spammed about providing feedback. So here we go. Me: Professional divemaster and Hawaii resident who had heard varying opinions of Dive Oahu so I wanted to see for myself. I did tell the Dive Master (DM) I was a local pro. The Boat: The Newton is a superb dive platform and Anger Management is no exception. I can hands down say it is one of cleanest and fastest boats I have dove on Oahu. However, I would never dive this boat with a full load. I think I counted tank racks for at least 20 divers. The only ding on the boat is the tank holders are cut to low so your gear always looks like it is falling out and there are no bungees. The Dive Team: Nothing the dive team did was unsafe. Extremely annoying yes, unsafe no. I also recognize that there was at least one DM candidate on board who needed the training. Where they did fail was correctly assessing the divers on board and determining who needed more supervision than others. Even after telling the crew I am a local professional and have dove both sites (LCU and Fantasy Reef) numerous times they still hovered and pestered me during the dive to the point that mid-dive I had to write on a slate to the DMC chasing me that they were following the wrong diver and to back off. I felt like I was being followed in a 7-11 by an owner who expected me to shoplift. Even worse I felt rushed the entire time. Turning the dive around when the first diver hit 2k lbs is beyond being safe. I came up with over 2k lbs after 28 minutes. It was a waste of my money because of some air hog. Additionally, the DM team let the air hog dive without a computer. His excuse was he used tables and his watch. Ok, I learned this method and did it in the late 90s for one year when I was living check to check. In 2020, there is no reasonable excuse a diver should be allowed to do a deep dive on a charter boat without a computer. The second dive was longer but at 40 minutes the team started running us up the line and the DMC even grabbed my buddy and jerked her. NOT COOL. Again, I came up with more than 1500 lbs. Booking: I booked via phone after seeing a post Fb about an extended range charter. Booking was easy and it was only when I got to the boat and heard everyone else say they got this and that discount did I realize I didn’t get the military or Kamaaina discount. Laurel, quickly fixed it when I asked but why didn't the staff just ask when I booked over the phone. Regardless of the discount it was still the most expensive 69 minutes of diving I have ever done on Oahu. Those are tourist prices. If you have seen this boat nearly empty as much as I have from Point Panic I bet it has nothing to due with COVID. The Captain: Captain Jerry demonstrated a complete lack of common sense and respect for regulations while speeding out of Kewalo Basin Harbor. I dive Point panic regularly and have never, never seen anyone gun the boat up like he did before even reaching rock wall leading to stairs. The wake he made was bigger than the swell. This was truly shocking to me. If I had video I would have sent it to DLNR. I did take video of the bottom of Anger Management during the dive for hull ID next time I am diving there and I will report the hazardous act to the proper authorities. During the group’s ascent on the second dive, I noticed the Captain also jumped off the boat and was swimming. No one was on board because we were all hanging out doing our safety stop. USCG regulations are very clear about where a Captain should be, when. I have have video of the moment he jumped in while we were all hanging out at 15 ft. This Captain, who loves to talk about himself, is one of the 3 most unsafe Captains I have encountered in Hawaii so far.

If you are a local or advanced diver save yourself a ton of money and call...

DONT GO HERE, AND DONT TRUST THEM!!! The staff is inexperienced and will say anything to you in order to take your money. I rented two sets of scuba gear from their Honolulu location and had a very bad experience. I walk into the shop with a lady at the counter who clearly is not familiar with scuba gear, she was getting flustered when asked simple questions and it seemed like it might be her first time renting equipment, she clearly was not comfortable with their POS system or the scuba equipment, it took over an hour to get out of the shop and I was the only customer. While i was checking the gear i attempt to purge the regulator and instead of shutting off when i stop pressing the purge button it continues to purge until i closed the tank valve. She says that’s normal (which it’s not) and after i say i’m not comfortable she says she will fix it. I start to load up the gear in the car while she “remedies” the situation and when i come back in she says the problem is fixed. I then ask to purchase a diving knife, they don’t have any of the the knives on display in stock and i finally settle for what they do have. I am finally done with the renting process and i leave on a 2 hour drive to the north shore of oahu. When i get to the dive spot I begin setting up my gear i realize that the store employee never replaced the broken mouth piece on the regulator, which made the one set of gear inoperable. I call the shop and explain the situation and the lady basically tells me it’s not her problem, i continue to explain that the one set of gear is inoperable and we are leaving hawaii the following evening. Finally the manager says bring the gear back and I will get my money back, however At this point it is 5pm and they close at 6, so the manager says come by in the morning and you won’t be charged. I come in the following morning and bring in all the gear, i speak with the employee telling him about my conversation the day before and the manager telling me to bring the gear back and i wouldn’t be charged. He says no worries and i ask if they would charge me, he says no we won’t, i asked him again only to get the same answer. So i walk out of there happy thinking that it is a bummer i didn’t get to dive but at least they made it right and didn’t charge me for the broken equipment. The next day i am home and i look on my bank statement and see they charged me for everything. So not only did they take forever getting me out of the shop and give me broken equipment (so i couldn’t go diving on my vacation), they then proceeded to lie to me and tell me if i brought it in the gear that they wouldn’t charge me. Their employee agreed too and told me not to worry when i came in the next day to drop the broken gear off. Yet I still was charged for everything. So to reiterate they are slow and not comfortable with the equipment and then when caught in a bad situation they will lie to you just to get you out of the shop. terrible experience all the way around, there are plenty of dive shops in oahu, do yourself a favor and don’t come to dive oahu...

While staying for 6 weeks in Honolulu I decided to take the Advance Open Diving class. I dove with Dive Oahu previously and had an exceptional experience. Unfortunately, this is not the case this time. As I understand this was a class not a rec dive so things should be different. My biggest complain relates to the instructor – Patrick. Avoid if you can. I felt the class and practice dives were rushed and not executed efficiently. E.g. there was one person in our 5+1 group which was running out of air in extremely fast way. This person run out of air on the way up from the deep dive and had to use instructor octopus to breath. After this incident I would expect the instructor will pay attention to this person to make sure the similar situation does not repeat. Well, unfortunately this was not the case. As my compass was not functioning for the navigation test my body and I were pair with this person with the idea I share the handheld compass with this person during my navigation test. During our 100yds “square” navigation the above person was leading our 3 person team. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the best idea. At the last leg of the square this person stopped and signal being “low on air”, after short stop we decided we need to surface, following the guidelines. As we were performing the “safety stop” our instructor (Patrick) found us and signal to go up – which we were already in the process of. After we surfaced he asked us to swim back to the boat. After we got out of our gear he asked three of us to join him at the bow to discuss what happened. Well, it wasn’t really a discussion. He basically was not happy that we did not performed the exercise correctly. I personally feel this was completely not fair. In my mind we followed the leader during the navigation. The leader got “low on air” and we all did exactly what we should do – surface. I get it that we did not completed the navigation exercise and had to do it again but we did exactly what should be done. I believe the instructor knowing the air consumption issue of this person should never pair us as a team. The instructor should navigate with this person himself to make sure all works as planned. I also have general comment about the class and the instructor. All of the class members, except myself were members of military (including the instructor). On top of it instructor seemed to have personal knowledge of the “low on air” person. During the entire process I felt as an outsider not part...