About Us

Welcome to Waihana

Waihana is a wetsuit company. The disciplines are spearfishing, freediving, and surf — the work happens on Oahu's North Shore — the gear gets tested in Hawaiian water by people who'd be in that water anyway, working that day or not.

Founded 2018

Waihana was founded in 2018 by three friends — Justin Baluch, Steven Murphy, and Nikolas Cartenian — to make professional-grade waterman gear for the Hawaii community and the global watermen tribe. Justin is a US Navy veteran (active duty 2002–2008, including deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom) and spent another decade in the Intelligence Community before stepping away in 2018 to build Waihana full-time. Waihana is a US Veteran-Owned Small Business.

The team includes some of the best spearfishermen in Hawaii, who put every wetsuit design through hard real-world testing before it ships.

The Work

Wetsuits, gloves, socks, jammers, surf tops, rashguards, apparel — designed and tested in Hawaii. The platform is eco-friendly Performance Neoprene, with Yamamoto 40 on select premium models. The spec details come from time in the water: knife pockets where your hand actually finds them, magnetic clips you can close one-handed, hood seals that handle a long surface interval, mission-grade reinforcement on the suits that need it.

We've built tactical wetsuits favored by elite Special Operations units — including Naval Special Warfare. We've also built the Saturday-morning suit you can pull on for a free dive on a tropical reef and trust to last a hundred more.

The Community

Waihana is the watermen and women — beginners and lifers, working operators and weekend dive crews — who hold their gear and themselves to a real standard. We share what we know. We look out for the places that taught us what we know. We'd rather spend the day in the water than talk about it.

Born from Water.