MUKILTEO — Scuba fins, dive tanks and wetsuits might soon be allowed again at Lighthouse Park as city officials consider overturning a recent ban against scuba diving.

It would be a big reversal for Mukilteo — the ban was unanimously approved for safety reasons just nine months ago — but a welcome reprieve for divers, who lost another favorite haunt this winter when the state removed an oil pier rich with marine life from Edmonds’ shoreline.

Reopening the park might not be Mukilteo’s last pro-scuba step, either.

Council president Randy Lord said embracing scuba divers might be a way to boost the city’s above-ground economy. He’s already plotting a possible underwater dive park off the city’s shoreline, an idea recommended by the city’s Parks and Arts Commission.

Scuba divers are thrilled.

“I’m still a bit stunned at how far things turned in our favor within a very short period of time,” wrote John Rawlings of Mill Creek on a local diving forum where scuba activists organized.

Rawlings is a professional marine photographer for Advanced Diver magazine and first dove at Lighthouse Park in the 1970s. He has worked all over the world, but Rawlings said Mukilteo’s Lighthouse Park is one his favorite places to dive anywhere because of its swift currents and the two long clay walls that are packed with fish, shrimp, crabs and even octopuses.

“It is where I go to Zen out, to mellow out, and to take some photographs of some amazing local stuff,” he said. “There’s an entire gamut of life and death going on down there.”

Officials adopted the ban last year without a full understanding of how many scuba divers used the beach at Lighthouse Park, said Jennifer Berner, the city’s Recreation and Cultural Services manager.

A boat launch at the beach is a safety hazard, so the city’s insurance company asked the city to close the beach to divers. Now, the insurance company believes installing signs on the beach warning that no lifeguard is on duty will be sufficient, Berner said.

That’s great news for the community, said Paul Hamstra, a diver who owns a business in Mukilteo.

Hamstra said that because the ban wasn’t well publicized, most divers only found out about it in February.

“We expected to fight tooth and nail for just the opportunity to dive there,” he said. But at the time, “Mukilteo was open to listening. And when they were educated about what divers do, and what divers would like to do, they were enthusiastic.”