Believe me, we'd love to take your money...

[GrimSleeper]

Having just been through it with yet another potential customer, I feel a need to ask why it is that people with <20 dives walk into the shop, tell me they want to dive the short cave - essentially a very long swim-through - we take some customers through, and then argue with me when I tell them they're not experienced enough to dive in an overhead environment at 30m/100 feet in full darkness?

Trust me, we are a business and we'd love to take your money. But we also know enough about what we're doing to be fairly sure that nobody with half-a-dozen open water dives ever is in a position to insist that they have the core skills - physical and mental - to insist that they'll be 'fine' in the cave and I'm being arbitrary and ridiculous in refusing to let them do the dive someone else has told them is awesome.

Yes. It is a great dive. But the guy who told you that? He got to do it because he had hundreds of dives, including experience of depth and overhead environments. That's why he got to do it. When you can say the same thing about your own diving, sure, we'll take your money and take you to the Cave of the Custom Shark. In the meantime, we'd prefer not to risk your life (and possibly other peoples') on the basis of your insistence that you'll be 'fine'. What is it about that that people feel they have a right to argue with? Is it really too much effort for divers to accumulate experience before they want to move onto more advanced dives? Why are so many divers convinced they've seen it all because they've dived a coral reef once?

Oh, and if the next inexperienced diver who wants to do the Cave trip is you, trust me. Arguing when we say we don't feel you have the necessary experience is a sure-fire way to convince us we really, really don't want to take you into an overhead environment...

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Thank you. The reason these people ask is because their OW training was sorely lacking and was all about sun, fun, pretty fishies, and meeting new people, going new places, and doing new things! And as long as they followed the guide no matter where he/she went they would be fine!
They were not told how dangerous this really is, the ways you can die doing it, that new divers have had horrible deaths in training, and that DM's/Guides have led people to their deaths. Can't tell em those things. It's bad for the bottom line.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Are they not going to be there long enough to take the approach of 'Look, I think I can handle a long swim through without getting anyone hurt even after 15 dives; how about I do a dive with you and you check me out...you'll see I'm not a show underwater and then we will talk about this dive I want to get in while I'm here?'

 

[cannon fodder]

DM's/Guides have led people to their deaths

I should have done my first dive after OW with you guys. The DM I contracted for my first dive wanted to take me inside a submerged aircraft. My instructer made a big deal of "it is your responsibility to dive within your limits". I refused to go in. I'm glad I listened and glad he made a point of it.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

The DM I contracted for my first dive wanted to take me inside a submerged aircraft. My instructer made a big deal of "it is your responsibility to dive within your limits". I refused to go in.

Tell us more about the context in which this death-trap of a submerged aircraft lay. I can only say it's a good thing you didn't have my OW instructor... we spent a fair amount of our last dive or two inside the school bus at Dutch, and visited the helo too (which I suppose technically counts as a "submerged aircraft", as I once watched some sorry joke of a wreck class do their line running exercise inside it).

 

[cannon fodder]

The school bus, etc at Dutch have holes cut into the tops and slightly larger access and exit points. My point is that the DM was too gung ho, this was dive number one. I was told that 60 feet was the limit of my training and no overhead environments. This was about 70 feet and definately an overhead environment.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

If you believed that 10' was a big deal, you're going to make some PADI instructors and NYC dive shops very happy. Was the plane pictured intact at the nose and tail? Had the interior been gutted?

 

[cannon fodder]

As far as the interior, I don't know, I didn't go in. The front windows looked broken out, but the tail was intact.

 

[BVickery]

I should have done my first dive after OW with you guys. The DM I contracted for my first dive wanted to take me inside a submerged aircraft. My instructer made a big deal of "it is your responsibility to dive within your limits". I refused to go in. I'm glad I listened and glad he made a point of it.

This was my instructors. They overly stressed that as OW divers we were in no way, shape, form or anything else, qualified to do any form of penetration dives. They also drilled into us that even though SCUBA is safe overall, it very much can kill you. That you should always dive within your limits, and if you feel off for any reason, don't hesitate to thumb the dive. This was not told once, but was constantly repeated throughout the classes and OW dives and then when signed off for our C-Cards.

Though I feel I lacked in the skill progression of diving from my instructors, I do feel they did their due diligence in warning/telling me about these aspects of diving.

 

[GrimSleeper]

Are they not going to be there long enough to take the approach of 'Look, I think I can handle a long swim through without getting anyone hurt even after 15 dives; how about I do a dive with you and you check me out...you'll see I'm not a show underwater and then we will talk about this dive I want to get in while I'm here?'

Ah, no... Those guys we like. Walk in ask what you need to do to go through the cave, and we'll do what we can, within reason, to help make it happen. No, it's the "I'm too experienced to consider any other dive, I have, after all, spent upwards of three hours underwater in total," approach that I struggle with, and it's amazing how often we get them.


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