Second Cathedral
It was a Tuesday and the weather and where we’d been the day before suggested that the best possible place we could take our divers was Second Cathedral on the south side of the island of Lana’i. First and Second Cathedral are the two most famous dive sites off Lana’i. They are both lava domes — house-size cavities formed in volcanic rock, with multiple entrances and exits in every direction, through which sunlight streams in a breathtaking, cathedral-like fashion.
Technically, the Cathedrals are caverns. However, unlike caverns in Florida and Mexico, the Cathedrals are not entrances to extensive, maze-like cave systems. There is no abundance of silt on the floor — and no way a diver could get disoriented and lost.
Divers are never more than 25 feet from multiple, well-lit exits and about the only way they could hurt themselves is to bolt straight for the ceiling and clunk themselves on the head. Our dive operation had taken tens of thousands of divers to the Cathedrals in its 18-year existence, with never an incident.
Okay, I know what you are thinking. “Joe” managed to find a way to get lost inside Second Cathedral. Guess again. He never even made it inside the Cathedral.
When I pulled up to Second Cathedral, I was surprised to see another boat there. This was unusual; we were generally the only dive operation to make it this far around Lana’i. The boat belonged to fellow operator Ed Robinson, and was being captained by Byrd Gleason, brother of then-Skin Diver publisher Bill Gleason.
Ed and Byrd were friends of ours. As their divers were already in the water, they’d be coming up before any of our people got down. This being the case, I decided to go ahead and stay at the site. The only thing I did any differently was that, where I’d normally anchor directly over the cavern entrance, I anchored instead about 50 feet west of Ed’s boat (still within sight of the entrance).
After giving my normal dive briefing, I pulled “Joe” aside. “Here is what I want you to do,” I said. “Get your divers in the water. Don’t descend. Swim on the surface over to the back of Ed’s boat. Look straight down. You’ll see the top of the lava dome 15 feet below you, and the cavern entrance 20 feet below that. Go straight down. Keep your people inside the cavern and within sight of everyone else until it’s time to surface.”
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