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