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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 22, 2016)
4 // COASTWEEKEND.COM Books, gardening, hiking, hobbies, recreation, personalities, travel & more Authors invite readers to plunge in Astoria businessman publishes history of NW diving By PATRICK WEBB FOR COAST WEEKEND Longtime diver Floyd Holcom wants to recruit more to his sport — and signal that adventures await close to home in Oregon. PHOTO COURTESY FLOYD HOLCOM With the proper photograph- The Astoria business- man and his writing collab- ic equipment and some pa- orator, Tom Hemphill, have tience, divers can capture images of exotic wild critters just published “Diving in the ocean. Off The Oregon Coast,” a 96-page illustrated book chronicling the history of have helped promote their Northwest diving. sport and look back at how diving has progressed since They hope its publica- the creation of the National tion will encourage more Association of Underwater people to strap on breath- Instructors in 1960. They ing apparatus and explore the world’s oceans. mention today’s education- al role of the Oregon Coast Holcom and Hemphill of Vancouver, Washington, Aquarium at Newport and have accumulated multiple credit Northwest divers’ shared efforts to remove decades of diving expe- man-made debris from the rience. Both have helped undersea environment. hundreds of divers learn The project took a year about safety, equipment as they condensed their and techniques for under- selections from more than water adventures. 800 photographs while Proceeds from their polishing the captions and book will benefit the text. Northwest Diving History The book features 25 Association. pages of pho- The paper- tos of colorful back is packed with photos ‘I PETTED AN aquatic wild- life, including dating back OCTOPUS, sea sponges, to the 1950s AND IT anem- when the sport PETTED ME starfish, ones and rock was in its BACK.’ fish. It is those infancy. These images and highlight fishing for abalone, lingcod memories that Hemphill considers the most thrill- and crab, and mention ing. diving sites like Haystack He first dived as a teen- Rock at Pacific City, Til- ager in the late 1950s. An lamook Head, the Barview enjoyment of recreational jetty and Port Orford. diving spurred a career as a Breathing equipment, commercial diver, at ship- masks and cameras have yards and elsewhere, in- their chapter. The authors specting and photographing describe how dive clubs PHOTO COURTESY FLOYD HOLCOM Floyd Holcom, an Astoria businessman and former Special Forces soldier, has explored underwater locations around the world. He and fellow diver Tom Hemphill have published a book about the history of diving off the Oregon Coast. underwater pipelines and performing heavy welding. He qualified as a Scuba instructor in the 1970s and has written a manual for commercial divers, as well as business and sales publications. Now 72, his recent focus has been on land, lecturing and consulting. He delights in summing up the joy of diving. “Just being in the underwater world is a real pleasant environment,” Hemphill said. “For me, it’s a real comfortable en- vironment. Just like some people enjoy climbing mountains — I don’t want to do that. Or jumping out of airplanes — I don’t want to do that, either! “The most enjoyable is the interactions with marine life. I have had encounters with octopus and large fish. You can hand-feed them. I petted an octopus, and it petted me back. It’s like going out into the woods and having a positive interaction with deer, or elk or a squirrel. That’s what it’s like — ex- cept it’s underwater.” Holcom has dived all over the world recreation- ally and during his trav- els with the U.S. Army, where he served in Special Forces. Twelve years ago, he opened Astoria Scuba at Pier 39 to equip and train people wanting to dive. The book reflects his simi- lar enthusiasm. “We really wanted to capture the imagination of the younger folks to get SUBMITTED PHOTO “Diving Off the Oregon Coast” by Tom Hemphill and Floyd Hol- com. them involved,” Holcom said. The warm waters of Hawaii, Florida and the Caribbean are crowded div- ing locations, he said. The colder waters off Oregon, even popular locales like Newport and Garibaldi, are less congested and home to bigger species of aquatic critters like octopus. Holcom hopes their book awakens an adventure mentality. “If you don’t explore the world’s oceans, you are missing out on 70 percent of the Earth,” he said. “Diving Off The Oregon Coast,” by Tom Hemphill and Floyd Holcom, 2016 Arcadia Publishing, Mount PHOTO COURTESY FLOYD HOLCOM Tom Hemphill Pleasant, S.C., Images of Modern America series, Amazon, $20.51. Proceeds benefit the Northwest Diving History Association. www.divinghistory.org