On Saturday, Sept. 9, two local divers paid tribute to an old friend.
Joel Silverstein and Tyler Stalter, along with a group of their friends, affixed a memorial plaque at the head of the ship that cost the life of Steve Donathan.
A veteran San Diego scuba diver, Donathan drowned June 25, 2005, while exploring the Yukon, a former Canadian warship lying in 105-feet of water almost two miles off Mission Beach.
The Yukon has been the site of more than 10,000 dives each year since it became an underwater attraction five years ago.
Donathan was a well-respected local underwater explorer, technical diver and owner of Point Loma’s Taopitek diving facility.
The 14-by-14-inch bronze plaque was attached to the ship with a chain at a spot that will be easy for divers to see.
“It’s just a couple friends getting together because we cared for him,” Silverstein said simply.
The gesture was his brainchild. Silverstein, a fellow technical diver and instructor, met Donathan after moving to San Diego from the East Coast. The two became friends, scuba buddies and later spent a great deal of time and energy in a search for a USAF B-36 bomber that crashed in 1952.
“I continue to lose friends each year, unfortunately, and I expect that to continue. It’s the nature of the beast,” Silverstein said. “Diving is dangerous and people who believe it isn’t are fooling themselves. We are entering into an alien environment, doing things that we weren’t meant to do, which is breathing under water.”
He adds that tech diving has opened up a window into scuba diving.
“We can now go deeper longer; however, when you go deeper, the window of survival gets really small,” Silverstein said. “As long as people want to see what others aren’t able, we’re going to be on the edge of survival.”
Though Donathan started diving late in life, this was his passion and “he was very good at it,” Silverstein said. “Unfortunately, that day just wasn’t his day.”
“Everyone liked Steve. He was a good guy. Very good instructor. Had an incredible passion for diving. A lot of friends still miss him,” he said.