Normally you would have to visit a coastal region to find a shop that caters to SCUBA divers.
But in northeast Wichita — 13 hours by car from any salt-line coast — Amber Waves Diving Company welcomes divers and helps sustain the sport in Kansas.
Tyler Brewer, co-owner and operator of Amber Waves, has been a SCUBA diver for more than 60 years. In the 1960s, he worked as a lifeguard at a local YMCA. He recalls two men using the pool to practice SCUBA diving. Brewer says they offered to train him, but he told them he couldn’t afford to do it.
“I was just a kid, and they said, ‘No, we’ll take care of it,’” Brewer said.
Those two men were working in conjunction with the Professional Association of Dive Instructors, or PADI, a group that standardizes SCUBA training. In the 1970s, dive shops in Wichita came and went, and it was hard to find SCUBA equipment or get air tanks refilled.
“Back then, there was no internet, so you couldn't buy gear anywhere. You did it all from catalogs,” Brewer said. “To get air fills, I'd have to be real nice to fire departments and try to get them to fill my tanks, or figure out a way to get the equipment and any extra training. … It was just difficult to be a SCUBA diver when there wasn't a SCUBA shop.”
That led to the beginning of Amber Waves. Brewer and two partners opened the first shop in Augusta. It was only 900 square feet, and they quickly outgrew it. In 2013, they moved to a larger space on Greenwich near Kellogg.
But neither of those early stores had a pool. For instruction, Amber Waves had to borrow or rent space from the YMCA or the Wichita Swim Club.
Then one of Brewer’s business partners had an idea:
“‘We have trouble getting water, let’s build a pool,’” Brewer recalls him saying. “I just laughed at him. I said, ‘Oh, you know, you're talking about a lot of money.’ I put together plans for something quite smaller than this, and told him the figure.”
Brewer said they didn’t want to see SCUBA diving die in the region. Brewer’s son, Brian, manages the shop, which offers everything from fins and goggles to air tanks and dive computers. Amber Waves also offers first aid classes and swim lessons.
According to its website, it is the largest PADI Training Center in Wichita.
On Sundays, there is an open swim session for divers at the facility’s 18-foot-deep pool, which Brewer says is the deepest non-military pool within three states.
One recent Sunday, Amber and Brian Harvey set up their gear before getting in the water to test out some new equipment.
Brian Harvey’s dad was a rescue diver, and that’s where Brian first got exposed to the sport. He would accompany his dad to training dives, hauling gear and tanks, and eventually earned his certification. He took a break from diving while in the Army and also got married.
“About 2015, I said, ‘I’m tired of being on land, I want to get back in the water.’ So I came over to Amber Waves … and slowly made my way to where I’m at now.”
Brian Harvey is rated as a Master SCUBA Diver Trainer and is a contract instructor at Amber Waves. His wife, Amber, became a certified diver because she didn’t want to be left out of trips. Their kids, now adults, are also certified “so we could make a family vacation out of it,” Amber Harvey said.
Amber Harvey said one of her favorite dives was in Bonaire, a Caribbean island 50 miles north of the Venezuela coast. She said she was the only one on the dive who saw an octopus, even though she tried to get the other divers’ attention.
Brian Harvey said his favorite dives are anytime he’s in the water.
Little SCUBA diving happens in Kansas. Brian Harvey has helped people who have lost things in lakes. “Someone calls the shop. The shop calls me. And I go and find it,” he said. He has found wedding rings, glasses, smartwatches, and other pieces of equipment.
For recreational SCUBA diving, many divers travel to freshwater lakes in surrounding states, including Beaver Lake in Arkansas and Tenkiller Lake in Oklahoma. That’s one reason the market can support a SCUBA shop like Amber Waves.
“We want this community to be bigger than what it really is,” Brian Harvey said.
Brewer agreed.
“It’s not about the money, it’s about the sport. It’s about the SCUBA family. We have a lot of us that like to go to the Caribbean, the South Pacific or Indonesian waters and dive in. And we do that,” he said. “Diving is a way to make you say, ‘Hey, I gotta take a trip.’ So that’s what we do here in Kansas.”
