SOUTH BAY / COVER STORY : Sub Culture : Catalina Island Sinks to New Depths With Underwater Attractions in an Effort to Attract More Tourists

The one-man submarine swirls around the wreck of a fishing boat like a Captain Nemo ride.

The encrusted hull of the fishing boat, seen through the sub’s glass dome, is furry with kelp and overrun with garibaldi and calico bass. The pilot maneuvers to get a better look. He is alone on the bottom of the sea until a voice intrudes on the vessel’s intercom: “What’s your depth?”

Eighty-five feet down.

The pilot is in Catalina Island’s Hamilton Cove, where would-be aquanauts are trained to captain the 10-foot submarine, the Sea Urchin.

More than 150 people have taken the submarine-pilot course, first offered this summer by a Canadian company that hopes its personal underwater craft will become a recreational rage like Jet Skis.

And just down the shoreline, the Santa Catalina Island Co. has added a semi-submersible boat, the Starlight, that takes three dozen passengers at a time on an underwater tour of kelp forests.

In the past few months, the new attractions have opened the depths of Catalina’s bays and coves to the masses. Although it’s too early to tell, island officials hope the subs will boost tourism.

“One of the biggest draws that Avalon has are its pristine bays and harbors,” said Avalon Mayor Ralph J. Morrow. “This helps. It’s an adventure.”

It couldn’t have come at a better time. Tourism, the island’s lifeblood, declined 14% in 1993. This year it is running about 5% ahead of last year.

“We have to hold our own as a legitimate attraction, right there with Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland,” said Jon Hardy, owner of Argo Diving Services and immediate past president of the island Chamber of Commerce. “We have to create legitimate, good rides, to bring people here, ones that don’t do any destruction to the island.”

As tourist attractions, submarines have caught on elsewhere. Six years ago, Atlantis Submarines launched a $79-per-person, 48-passenger submarine tour in Kona, Hawaii. The vessels proved so popular there that the company has added four more throughout the islands. The company offers similar tours in the Grand Cayman Islands, along with a $275-per-person tour of a shipwreck 800 feet underwater.

On Catalina, the passenger submarine Starlight is not completely submerged, but its 36 passengers get a similar experience. They sit six feet underwater as the pilot, above the surface, steers through Lover’s Cove. The vessel replaced the Phoenix, a glass-bottom boat that had been in operation since 1931.

“We wanted something unique,” said Joe Caliva, director of sightseeing for Santa Catalina Island Co. “We wanted to try to get Catalina on the cutting edge of what’s happening in tourism.”

Santa Catalina Island Co. and others have long explored getting submarines that could go completely underwater, but a $7.5-million price tag proved too costly. By contrast, the Starlight, where passengers are just below the surface, costs about $750,000.

The $18-per-person tours have proved so popular that the company is considering adding another boat, Caliva said.

On deck, a captain throws food to the fish, causing them to swarm near the windows below deck.

“Totally awesome. Is that how you say it here?” Disa Persson, 23, of Denmark, said as she looked through the windows at the swarms of topsmelt --thin, six-inch-long fish with neon blue stripes.

“I’m fascinated by this,” she said. “I really wanted to see the underwater.”

But those who go down in the one-person submarine have more than sightseeing as their motive for taking the plunge.

“You don’t go down there just for the marine life; you go down there to say you’ve done it,” said Kristina Denzler, 23, a diving instructor on the island who took the class. “It’s a trip.”

The underwater adventure doesn’t come cheap. It costs $199 for the three-hour pilot class and underwater excursion in the Sea Urchin.

Over the summer, the company that owns the sub tried to entice customers by placing a full-scale model of it at Avalon Aquatics, a Catalina dive shop. The working vessel is launched from a barge at nearby Hamilton Cove.

There, instructor Jon Council, a former marine researcher in the Pacific Northwest, gives students a complete rundown of the sub. The life support system, he tells them, includes a scrubber that collects carbon dioxide as a pilot exhales; at the same time, a tank fills the sub with oxygen.

A safety diver follows the sub at all times. The vessel is connected to a tether and can be pulled to the surface quickly in case of emergency. Pilots can also unscrew a bolt and release the sub’s weight to make it return to the surface.

The company has had no accidents in 300 or so dives.

“It’s almost idiot-proof,” said Denzler, the scuba instructor. “In (scuba) diving you have to worry about (pressure) tables and decompression. You don’t have to here.”

*

Pilots lie prone, facing the front glass dome, to operate the controls. Once inside, students get a trial run-through, with the sub still on the barge. When that is finished, the vessel is lifted into the water. Just partially submerged, the sub drifts for a bit, as Council has the pilot check for leaks.

Then, the plunge. When the pilot turns three knobs, air is released from three chambers, and the sub gradually sinks. The first few minutes can be a bit nerve-racking for first timers.

“Right at first you are checking all the points for leaks,” said Timo Hakkarainen, 15, of Olympia, Wash., whose uncle surprised him with a lesson during a recent visit to the island. “It’s going through your head. Then you just get enthralled. You just don’t even think about it.”

In about seven minutes, the sub glides to 85 feet below the surface. Students start the thrusters, which make the vessel move back and forth. Most pilots are directed to a boat wreck, a popular scuba diving spot, because it attracts marine life.

On Bruce Moody’s first plunge, schools of calico bass and a barracuda swarmed the white submarine, perhaps attracted to the light. Other pilots have spotted a seal, which dances around the sub and peers through its front and top domes.

“There’s a big difference between seeing something on video and in a camera and actually looking at it,” said Moody, 34, of Santa Monica.

Moody, a scuba diver since he was in his teens, spent time learning the controls. Pilots have to learn how to level off the submarine by releasing or taking in air. If too much air is brought into the sub, it will rise to the surface. That could be a problem if a yacht is in the way.

“I was concerned about remembering the controls,” he said. “You’re piloting the submarine for the first time. That’s why it’s more for the adventurer, the thrill seeker, the adrenaline junkie.”

Or it’s for the technically inclined like John (Scotty) McGregor, 73. A retired aerospace engineer, he took the class three weeks ago.

“This was quite easy to learn,” he said. “I was more interested in the handling of the submarine than the sightseeing.”

The West Los Angeles resident barely fit in the submarine: He’s 6 feet, 4 inches and weighs 240 pounds. But he did it.

“I was more or less filling every inch,” he said. “It took a bit of doing to get me in.”

McGregor, who started scuba diving in the late 1940s, has wanted to go solo in a submarine since a visit to the Grand Cayman Islands, where the pilots in a research sub let him man the controls with their close supervision.

The Sea Urchin, McGregor said, has him hooked. He wants to take a more advanced course that will soon be offered in Vancouver, B.C., where pilots learn how to operate submarines that go to great depths.

*

The class is all part of Sea Urchin Submersibles’ plans to put subs in the hands of the general public.

“The underwater is a huge, unexplored area of the world that is not tapped out,” said company director Jonathan Newman.

In recent years, subs like the Sea Urchin have been marketed to researchers, oil companies and the military. Newman’s company and a manufacturer, International Hardsuits Inc., have joined together to mass-produce the Sea Urchin for dive clubs, marine shops and fishing enthusiasts. The price: $125,000.

“We had a guy who owns a $17-million jet come in,” he said. “He wants to buy one for his yacht. . . . We’re basically putting out an underwater sports car.”

The company placed the Sea Urchin at Catalina because of its proximity to a large market. But with the tourist season coming to a close on the island, the sub is headed elsewhere. The vessel will be taken early next month to Jules Undersea Lodge, an underwater hotel in Key Largo, Fla.

Next spring, company officials say it is likely they will return to Catalina with an updated version of the vessel, which can reach depths of 1,000 feet, compared to the 300-foot limit of the current craft.

*

Most new pilots, however, aren’t as interested in the craft as a marvel of technology. They just want an adventure.

Patti Litchenberg, a computer programmer and gift shop clerk on Catalina, wanted to plunge in the sub ever since she sat next to the pilot of a passenger sub on a trip to Hawaii last year.

She went solo in the Sea Urchin in August. After she surfaced and the sub was pulled back to the barge, Litchenberg was eager to tell people.

“I told my kids first off,” she said. “My son said, ‘What happened to your claustrophobia?’ But it didn’t matter. I did it.”

Alone Underwater

1) The sub is connected to a barge by a cable and tether. The pilot is instructed how to check for leaks and monitor the oxygen level.

2) A safety diver removes the cable, leaving the tether connected to the sub. When the sub drifts about 50 feet from the barge, the instructor gives OK to submerge.

3) The sub is again tested for leaks. The pilot can now begin a slow descent to the bottom of the ocean. Safety diver stays with submerged vessel.

4) The sub goes 85 feet below the surface in five minutes. Pilots attempt to get close to lobsters, garibaldi and calico bass in the wreck of a fishing boat.