He should’ve been born a fish but instead Larry Smith was born a boy in East Texas and grew up into a redneck who loved the water. Today, 30 years later, his large and buoyant Texas frame and beard somehow fit not only his origins but enough professional credentials to choke a baby whale.
Larry’s long and illustrious career as a diver has taken him to secret seas around the world, working in almost every facet of the business – industrial and sports diving, owning and operating full-service dive shops, conducting scuba training programs, starting up dive resorts. You name it, he’s done it.
I began by asking him how he first got interested in diving. “As a kid I took a dive course from a guy who came around once a year to the local YMCA. He operated a small shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico and we used to go spearfishing together on the incredibly fish-rich offshore oil platforms. He recognized my unusual natural ability in the water and encouraged me to become a dive instructor. So, I basically found my niche early on and just followed what I loved. It just happened. Nothing was ever planned.”
Larry’s lifelong passion for diving got its real start in 1972 when he began to provide all levels of scuba training to local colleges, health clubs and private enterprises. His most dangerous work was with Texan and Oklahoma electrical power plants servicing and repairing cooling intake equipment, putting in long hours underwater in dirty hazardous conditions with zero visibility. “Commercial diving isn’t as glamorous as people think. But the money’s good. You can work a week and then go buy a new Chevy truck!” In the mid 1970s, he worked in the Isle of the Pines in Cuba in a program sponsored by the U.S. government. At the time, President Carter was trying to re-establish ties with communist Cuba and marine tourism was the angle to get their foot in door.
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We were sent there to help set up dive operations and advise Cuban divemasters and tour operators on how to serve the expected flood of American marine tourists. But Carter and Castro fell out somehow and the whole project fizzled out. “My most memorable moment was when we landed in Havana from Fort Lauderdale in an old DC-3 with two RussianMiGs off each wingtip.”
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Soon after I worked with Tom Allen of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Remember him? He was that rough and ready guy who used to wrestle anacondas while sidekick Merlin sipped martinis and narrated”. Allen was asked to develop marine tours to developing destinations such as Cozumel, Cayman Islands, Bonaire and the new independent nation of Belize. Larry was among the earliest dive pioneers to introduce the country’s underwater wonders to the world. “The main draw for divers in Belize was the mysterious ‘Blue Hole’ which Jacque Cousteau had just ‘discovered.’ I started leading expeditions to the dive site shortly after Cousteau’s ship Calypso called there.”
In 1989, an offer came in from Indonesia to serve as cruise director for what was being billed as “The World’s Best Liveaboard taking divers to the World’s Best Diving.” The Tropical Princess was Indonesia’s first to operate successfully in the remote regions of what was then Irian Jaya, now Papua. Before the ship left the shipyard in Singapore, it was sold-out two years in advance.
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We were the first to explore Cendrawasih Bay and the Pedido Islands. The best diving we found was Mapia Atoll and the incredible marine life around the channel leading into the lagoon - “high-voltage” is the term I would use to describe the kind of excitement this place guaranteed!
After being in Indonesia only several months, Larry fell in love and eventually married Dewi Asih whom he first met in a Yogya shopping mall. “I had a Bahasa Indonesia phrasebook, saw a pretty girl and asked her to help me learn some new words. She said she also wanted to learn English. We’ve been practicing for the past 14 years.”
After spending nearly three years in the Caribbean with Dewi, Larry accepted another offer in the Asia/Pacific region to contribute his know-how and skills to the start-up of another liveaboard owned by the son of Malaysia’s prime minister. The target destination were the numerous and remote atolls
in the hotly-disputed Spratly Islands of the China Sea.
By now Larry had become widely known as a “start-up specialist,” helping owners inexperienced in the dive industry to break-in to the highly competitive market, show them shortcuts in gaining recognition, and teach them how to operate dive voyages safely and successfully to remote dive related outposts. Since the 1980s, he has worked more or less continuously on luxury liveaboards with the exception of a short break in North Sulawesi training dive guides.
Larry currently operates a highly advanced Australian built aluminum catamaran, the Adventure Komodo, for the new Bali-based adventure company Adventure H2o. “In comparison to the wooden pinisi with their 400-year-old hull design, the speed, reliability, safety, comfort, fine dining and wines that this brand new 75 foot ship offers is a mega upgrade to what is now available. Constructed with the latest aircraft-grade aluminum materials that are fire-proof and lightweight, she’s reset the standards several notches above the competition!”
What’s the best dive spot in Indonesia? “There’s a new and growing wave of divers and photographers who do nothing but observe and photograph unusual sea creatures. The Kungkungan Bay Resort in North Sulawesi on the other side of the peninsula from Bunaken in the Lembah Straits is now known amongst these types of divers as the best place to see such exotic marine critters such as frog fish, ghost pipe fish, star gazers, pygmy seahorses, sea moths, hundreds of species of colorful nudibranchs, mimic octopus, flamboyant cuttlefish...the list is truly endless. New species are continually being discovered. That’s the place.”
Suggestions for interviews or comments may be sent to pakbill2003@yahoo.com
Copyright@2003 Al Hickey
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