This is the tenth year for the Theater. In addition to the video shown on a 7-foot screen on deck, where Diver Ed is seen finding and handling sea animals under the boat, those animals are brought on board for interactive participation. The passengers, many of them kids, can handle the sea animals while Diver Ed talks about how these animals live in the sea. Ed is a bit of a showman for the kids on board, engaging their curiosity and getting laughs with a variety of visual aid gags. The favorite for the kids, says Ed, is the sea cucumber. They are slimy and strange looking, with peculiar eating habits that get the kids', and their parents’ attention. The Dive-In Theater operates from mid-May through mid-October, with three 2-hour trips a day. Diver Ed, as he is known on and off the boat, has been diving for 27 years. Monat is from a fishing family, and after attending the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor he went to work in the Atlantic. He has been a commercial diver and fishermen for 24 years. In the fall, Monat teaches diving and does commercial diving, recovering vessels, and installing pilings for the Coast Guard, etc. On Sundays he runs dive charters for certified divers, and teaches diving. In the winter months he dives for scallops. Monat has found a lot of things working on the ocean floor over the last 27 years. The strangest thing he said he’s come across was a bronze bust of a man named Proctor, of Proctor and Gamble. Apparently the Proctors had a summer house near the ferry terminal where he was diving. The top half of the head was visible above the mud. Through the hazy transparency of the water it was a startling sight. Diver Ed’s last boat was torn off its mooring last November in 85 mph winds. It was driven up on Bar Island where the keel was torn off the hull. Monat went out there to attempt a recovery, but it was a total loss. “That was a tough day,” said Monat. The insurance company paid far less than what he needed to replace the boat. In response to his loss the Bar Harbor community put on fund raisers collecting $30,000 to help Monat buy a new boat. A fact which he understandably describes as, “just amazing.” The new boat, built by H&H Marine in Steuben, Maine is longer and wider for greater stability. The custom boat will carry more passengers, and will enable Ed to get to more areas in the bay. It also has a newly designed larger screen, a cascade system for air storage, and a more powerful engine to go where few have thought to go, and back, faster. |
