Take a Ride on the Atlantis Submarine

Excerpt from the book I Need to Get L'eid from the Teresa the Traveler book series.  I returned my rental car and then went to the beach in Waikiki where I came upon a booth selling rides on the Atlantis Submarine.  The lure of riding in a submarine was too much for me to resist so I booked the next tour. I had my laptop with me so I waited in the nearby Starbucks and Googled Atlantis Submarines

   . I discovered that the idea of a tourist submarine was conceived by design engineer Dennis Hurd during his time at International Hydrodynamics, a company that specialized in manned submersibles capable of bringing oil executives to inspect offshore deep-sea rig sites.   Hurd attracted a group of investors and in 1986, launched the first battery-powered non-polluting tourist submarine in Grand Cayman. Bigger and better submarines were quick to follow as tourists flocked to view coral reefs in air-conditioned comfort allowing Atlantis to expand into Barbados, St. Thomas, Guam, Cozumel St. Martin, Aruba and the Hawaiian Islands.                
     Ten minutes before departure, I walked to the end of their dock where we were shuttled by boat to the submarine.  Once we were all aboard, we dove down to a sunken ship placed there by Atlantis to act as artificial reef.  The reef was relatively new and did not attract the same amount of marine life as would an established reef  but I was able to spot a green turtle along with a few fish. When the tour was over, our captain released an air bubble to alert the surface crew of our whereabouts then waited for permission to resurface. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. I finally felt was ready to leave Oahu.

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