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Photo Ventura County Fire.
Kristy Finstad was helping to lead the dive excursion that ended in a deadly boat fire Monday – and her desperate brother said the free-spirited marine biologist was still missing 10 hours later.
“We’re still waiting to hear, unfortunately. It’s not looking good,” brother Brett Harmeling, 31, told the Daily News.
Finstad, 41, helped organize the trip with husband Dan Chua through the family’s company, Worldwide Diving Adventures.
The company took the group out on the 75-foot Conception owned and operated by Truth Aquatics in Santa Barbara.
Chua did not join his wife on the trip and was leading a separate group in Costa Rica, Harmeling said.
“She’s done this trip hundreds of times,” he said of the Labor Day weekend SCUBA trip.
The three-day liveaboard diving tour was advertised as a $665-per-person chance to see octopi, colorful anemones, crabs, halibut, wolf eels and bioluminescent zooplankton in the waters around the Channel Islands.
The Conception burst into flames around 3 a.m. Monday, with five crew members jumping into the water before they were saved by a passing pleasure vessel.
