A visitor heading to West Maui this summer may see one of Lahaina Harbor’s most familiar signs of life again. The submarines are back, and BOH editors will be stepping on board. But the harbor we’re all returning to is not the Lahaina Harbor many visitors and residents remember.
Atlantis restarted Lahaina tours on June 2, 2026, nearly three years after the fire took almost everything the company had on Maui, from the submarine itself down to its battery chargers. What came back is a leaner operation working around a harbor still under reconstruction. The contrast says a lot about where Lahaina stands; more than any announcement could.
What restarted this week at Lahaina Harbor.
Atlantis is now running three tours daily at 9, 11, and 1, five days a week. The operation is closed Tuesday and Friday for a full day of battery recharging.
The company towed one of its 48-passenger battery-powered submarines from Oahu to make the restart possible. Guests park in a designated area near the harbor, are escorted to a temporary pier slip, and spend roughly 1.9 hours on the tour, including a descent to 130 feet.
The listed price for the experience is $148 for adults and $66 for children, with a minimum height of 36 inches. Atlantis, however, is already running a limited-time summer sale at $128 and $56 for keiki. The dive highlight remains the Carthaginian, which is a 97-foot hull sunk in December 2005 in 95 feet of water, where it now serves as an artificial reef.
Before and after the Lahaina fire.
Before the fire, Atlantis operated six tours daily, seven days a week, and carried more than 2 million passengers over its 32-year history since 1991. That scale is diminished for now, replaced by one submarine, five days, and escorted access through a harbor that is still not ready to function as a full harbor.
The company also says that just 15 of its 32 furloughed employees have returned. Atlantis framed the restart as a sign of life returning. While that’s true, it is also a clear measure of how much is still missing.
Where the harbor rebuild really stands.
The state Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation (DOBOR) said that dredging of the main harbor basin also started this week, the first dredge of the basin since 1966, and that it is largely possible only because the harbor is empty of vessels.
That dredging alone runs well into the fall. The bigger work, the piers and wharfs where boats actually tie up, won’t even start until after this summer ends, and the state doesn’t expect to finish any of it before the middle of next year. The last pieces, including a rebuilt harbor office and the ferry pier, are set to stretch toward the end of 2027.
And every one of those dates comes with one important asterisk. They are subject to funding and permitting. The current best estimate now stretches more than four years after the fire.
No electricity or mooring at Lahaina Harbor.
One of the more striking details is what still is not there. There is no electricity at the harbor. The rebuilt restrooms have been finished and sitting there since December, but are still waiting for Hawaiian Electric to bring power to the harbor.
Mooring inside the harbor remains prohibited. That means Lahaina Harbor is open only in a quite limited sense, not as a full vessel base and visitor hub that once anchored this part of West Maui.
The harbor officially reopened on December 15, 2025, for limited commercial operations, daytime only and for loading and unloading at the dock. Four operators returned at that soft opening, and the state said more would follow in early 2026. It is now June, and no updated count has been published. The number of permitted operators before the fire was 47, and they were said to employ nearly 600 residents. The fire also destroyed 82 boats, according to state figures.
The harbor starts returning to the town that is still waiting.
The harbor is in many ways ahead of the town around it. Maui County’s rebuild dashboard shows that 573 building permits have been issued since the fire. Only 27 of those are commercial, and just 11 of those projects are completed. Homes are going up across Lahaina, but the restaurants, shops, and storefronts that gave the harbor a town to walk into remain almost entirely on paper.
One piece of the new harbor had already been built before the fire. The state had contracted for inner wharf work back in 2021, and the new dock and gangways were fabricated and stored at Maalaea, with the project set to begin in September 2023. Then came the fire. The contract has since expired; the work must be re-bid, and those finished docks are still in storage and are now not expected to go in before 2027.
Visitors this summer will find Lahaina Harbor open and running, but nothing like what they remember. One submarine instead of a fleet. A temporary slip, an escort taking visitors to the boat, restrooms without power, and dredging equipment working this basin that hasn’t been cleared in sixty years. The reopening is real. So is everything around it that isn’t there yet.
We’d like to hear from those of you who, like BOH editors, are planning to be on West Maui this summer.
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