Dive Pacific 175 Dec2020 Jan 2021

BACK IN THE DAY
Dive mag through the years
With Dave Moran
With Dive New Zealand/
Dive Pacific changing
hands it’s timely to review
how your dive magazine came
into being, and what it was
like in the early days.
In the 1980s magazine
founder Dave Moran recalls
commercial dive work was
often sporadic. He was also
running his own registered
electrician business then,
Moran Electrical, when
friend and colleague Kelly
Tarlton called up one day in
1983 and asked him to come
and look down a manhole
above the old sewage tanks
on Tamaki Drive in Auckland.
“Do you think we could get some
lights down here so we can see
what’s going on?” Kelly said. “I
admit I thought it was bit crazy,”
Dave recalled. “And it turned my
life upside down.”
Building Kelly Tarlton’s
Underwater World was an 18
month project. The electrical
component was massive! “We
had a big sign on Tamaki Drive
‘The Sharks Are Coming”.
Dave & Petal Moran
The attraction was funded
by the Development Finance
Corporation, one of the few
projects they funded that was
repaid in full. It opened in
February 1985.
Then sadly Kelly Tarlton died
suddenly. Dave, who knew
‘every nut and bolt in the
place’, was asked to become
general manager which he
was for three years.
With the expertise
from building such
a unique aquarium
experience they went
onto to planning similar
developments in San
Francisco, Melbourne
and the UK. Then came
the 1986 stock market
crash, and the whole
offshore project team was
The publishers Dave Moran &
Gilbert Peterson
made redundant.
Dave had all this aquarium
knowledge, plus commercial
diving contacts. He specialized
in explosives. One of his
biggest jobs was blowing/
cutting a well head off on an
oil exploration rig off New
Plymouth. But no job opportunities
came up.
6 Dive New Zealand | Dive Pacific