Larry Smith ’s diving career began in 1972 when he became a Y.M.C.A diving instructor in Texas. Frequent spear fishing trips to the off shore oilrigs in Gulf of Mexico allowed him the opportunity to develop a lifelong passion for diving. For 12 years, he owned and operated Full Service Dive Shops in Texas with all levels of Scuba training provided to 2 local colleges, 2 Y.M.C.A.s, various Health Clubs and private enterprise. Other facets of his business involved maintaining commercial diving contracts with a number of Texas and Oklahoma electrical power plants to service and repair their underwater/cooling water intake equipment. A strong and avid supporter of Scubapro Diving Equipment, Larry actively contributed to repair & maintenance training programs introduced in Isle of the Pines, Cuba in the mid ‘70s with only a few other key Scubapro dealers. During this time, he also offered adventure tours to developing destinations such as Cozumel, Cayman Islands, Bonaire, and the new independent nation of Belize. In 1986, Larry pulled up stakes in Texas and relocated in Little Cayman to help set-up and operate Pirates Point Resort with gourmet chef, Gladys Howard. The move was planned to take him away from his dive shop business for only 2 to 3 months, but he didn’t find the time to leave Little Cayman for over 2 years.

In 1989, an offer came to him from Indonesia to serve as Cruise Director/Dive Operations Manager for what was being billed as “The World’s Best Liveaboard taking divers to the World’s Best Diving”. Before the ship left the shipyard in Singapore, it was “sold-out” for 2 years in advance. The liveaboard, Tropical Princess was Indonesia’s first liveaboard and operated successfully in the extremely remote regions of what was then Irian Jaya (now West Papua). During this time, Larry met and fell in love with Dewi Asih, who followed him on-board the Tropical Princess all the way across Indonesia from Bali to Iran Jaya. In late 1991, Larry and Dewi were married in Kingston Jamaica where they relocated to develop a Marine Park /Protected Area Program in Negril: The Negril Coral Reef Preservation Society. The NCRPS rapidly gained momentum and has been awarded numerous Conservation Awards and is still active today.

By now, Larry had become widely known in the dive industry as a “start-up specialist” for remote out-post dive related investments. After almost 3 years in Negril, Larry accepted another offer in the Asia/Pacific Region, this time from the son of Malaysia’s Prime Minister, to contribute his resources to the start-up of another liveaboard: Spirit of Borneo. The target destination was to be the numerous and remote atolls in the extremely politically sensitive and disputed Spratly Islands of the South China Sea. But after only 10 months, another new liveaboard recruited him and Dewi Asih to return to Indonesia and take the operational helm of Cehile. With spacious accommodations for 28 divers and a crew of 24, Cehili became, and still is, a legend among luxury liveaboards.

In 1995, Larry & Dewi took a break from liveaboards and accepted a position with Kungkungan Bay Resort in North Sulawesi as Dive Operations Manager. Here, with an enthusiastic group of young local men that Larry trained as dive guides, they developed what is commonly known as the best and most productive place in the world for observing and photographing exotic “Critters”: frog fish, ghost pipe fish, star gazers, pygmy seahorses (numerous varieties), sea moths, hundreds of species of colorful nudibranchs, mimic octopus, flamboyant cuttlefish...the list is truly endless. New species are continually being discovered in the now famous Lembeh Strait of North Sulawesi. Before leaving KBR, he introduced the philosophy of coastal resource management, based on the success of the NCRPS, and initiated the Lembeh Strait Preservation Society (LSPS).

Most recently, Larry has served the luxurious Pelagian in Thailand, Indonesia. He was with the Pelagian as Cruise Director when she began her historic one-year “2001 Voyage of Discovery” through the Islands & Atolls of the Western Pacific including Palau, Yap, Truk, and Papua New Guinea.

Larry is presently serving the new Bali based investment, Adventure H2o, setting up & operating a new, highly advanced, Australian built aluminum catamaran. This brand new 75 ft. ship, Adventure Komodo, offers the reliability, speed, comfort, and fine dining & wines that is a welcomed advance to Indonesia’s liveaboards. The ship also serves the growing surf-charter trade in the Mentawai Islands of West Sumatra. Dive operations begin in mid-December 2003 with high adventure dive voyages to Komodo, the Banda Sea, and the Raja Empat region of West Papua. Adventure H2o departs Bali for this series of luxury dive voyages to the most species diverse, beautiful, and remote regions of Indonesia.

Photo by John Scarlett